Bird of Prey
by Shoedonym
Summary: The problem with living in a world of magic, he would argue, is that the lines between fact, fiction and fairy tale blur. And still, Killian is told to never visit the lake on the third full moon of Spring. But it doesn't stop him. Swan Mythology AU.
1. i, ii, iii, iv

_A/N: Inspired by Germanic/Celtic Swan mythology, inspired by Patrick Wolf's Magpie, and figured CS AU week was as good a time as any to force myself to post it. (Fits in with Days 1, 3 or 7 of the AU week take your pick cause I sure can't.)_ _Swan Mythology AU_

 _._

 _ **Bird of Prey ( 1 / 2 )**_

.

 _One for sorrow  
Two for joy  
Three for a girl  
Four for a boy  
Five for silver  
Six for gold  
Seven for a secret, never to be told_

 _._

The problem with living in a world of magic, he would argue, is that the lines between fact, fiction and fairy tale blur.

They blur and blend together until hearsay becomes rumour, rumour becomes bedtime story, story becomes legend, and legend spreads through every village, right up to the point where Killian is told to never visit the lake on the third full moon of Spring.

To him, his mother, his town and his world, the facts are simple - it is dangerous, the swans cannot be trusted, the swans will lure men into the depths, down beneath dark, black waters until they come out the other side.

(Well, the 'Otherside'.)

The facts are simple: beware the bathing swans.

And yet it is his favourite story, the gentle rumblings of his mother's voice lulling him in between words of cloaks and feathers, foolish boys and epicures of more than just food and gold and wine.

As a child he thinks it is merely what mothers do, telling tall tales and fairy fables to their children, drawing gentle fingers through their hair and hushing moral lessons against heedlessness and greed into their pillows. In retrospect, it was a far more serious warning, one that deserved more heed than he gave it.

And only partially for the reasons he was told.

But these things are always better realised with the benefit of hindsight, and at fifteen Killian knows no better.

What he does know is that the stories and warnings from the townsfolk each and every Spring only make him miss his mother more. They never get the story quite right, their songs more superstitious and less intriguing, their voices never soft, their voices always humourless.

But that night, the moon is full in the sky and it bathes the house through the open shutters, and his mind wanders to other things that bathe in a lunar light.

Maybe it's because he misses her, the sorrow eating more at him than it usually does, and maybe it's because Liam has left, and his father has been gone for hours. The noise from the town square comes in dull through the open window and it's a poor, poor substitute for how this time of year used to feel.

And maybe it's because he's having trouble remembering how her voice would sound calling his name.

Perhaps that's why he does it; perhaps that's why he goes.

.

.

 _One for sorrow…_

The path to the lake is well trodden, but Killian barely pays it any consideration, veering off it and down his own lesser trampled short cut, stumbling slightly on the wandering thicket of sticks that are barely visible in the dark.

The forest on the edge of the hill is difficult to navigate in the night, his worn and weathered boots slipping over dead leaves more times than he cares to count, but at least the ground is dry. The ground is dry and the air has a lingering warmth, and each and every single step he takes builds a boyish anticipation in his chest, in his fingers, in his toes. He tells himself he's not breaking any rules, he tells himself he'll be fine – he's old enough he can handle himself.

Killian couldn't say for sure why he is rushing so much, heart beating impatiently between breaths - he could pretend he needs to get back before his father notices him gone; he could pretend it's to reduce the risk of getting caught; he could lie to himself.

Truth is he runs because he's eager, eager to rekindle the things his mother took with her.

He definitely expected the night to be more eerie than it is. Fifteen Springs of cautionary songs drilled into him and he'd assumed the woods would be deathly quiet, for the breeze to not even dare, to feel an otherworldly chill to his bones.

But it's the same as it always is, and if anything, the nocturnal creatures are more vocal, owls hooting incessantly over his head, the birds barely caring about where he's going or why.

And every step he takes towards the water's edge makes him wonder what he will see when he gets there.

Killian almost expects the whole thing to be myth, a joke told once or twice that snowballed, maybe the result of a witch pulling a rouse, a drunk imagining things. The contemplation is futile, an attempt at trying to lower his own expectations – whatever those expectations actually are – and he skids into a large rock that sits half-in half-out of the water, low hanging branches of the old oak tree shrouding him as the woods meet water's edge.

It's not a myth.

It's definitely not a joke.

The rock is cold and sharp beneath his hands, the water even more so as he wades a few inches in, but all he can focus on are the distant images, shadowed and swimming in the depths of the black lake. There are still two figures further down on the shore, and Killian watches, rapt and disbelieving as they swing off their capes – white feathered cloaks – placing them safely on the cobbled bank and walking calmly, unhurried to join the others, naked bodies disappearing seamlessly without ripple.

And nothing happens.

The women are varying ages, each as unfairly beautiful as the next, and Killian is plain and simply too stung with incredulity to even dwell on the fact that they're not wearing any clothes (he can barely tell at this distance). There are women as pale white as the moon that shines above them, and those who having shirked their black plumage drift into the water, skin brown and black, the lake as dark as they are. They swim and chatter, voices rippling just as the water doesn't, their laughter echoing pleasantly through the reeds.

But nothing happens.

There is no great evil ritual, no bacchanalia, no drowning of poorly fated men with the seduction of their bodies. There isn't even any magic, no great swells of weather to match – actually, the only sign of any enchantment is the quiet wisp of white light that swirls each woman as they disrobe and re-robe, hopping to and from their swan form.

Killian's almost disappointed.

These are the great swans, messengers of the fairy world, that he's spent his whole life hearing horrors about, and he stays there for what must be hours, waiting for the great stories to unfold.

But they don't.

And it only intrigues him more.

.

.

No one believes him, of course.

They don't believe that he would live to tell the tale, nor do they believe that the creatures would be so benevolent. It is almost as though they pity him in his desperation to convince, seeing straight to his original intentions with a sympathetic glance.

The townsfolk wake the next morning, each one thankful that their sons and husbands, cousins and friends are still in their beds, secretly hoping that the swans had spared their loves one's lives for another. And it is a terrible thing to wish upon others, but they wish it every year, and the superstition sits unpleasantly in Killian in the light of his recent discovery.

The fact that no one knows if anyone is missing doesn't seem to matter, and they take the silver off their doors.

He tells his father, but his father barely listens – most likely assuming it's a game – clapping the boy gently on the back, assuming it will convey his response to the conversation.

The other children don't believe him either, his friends playfully start calling him the Boy Who Cried Swan.

It only takes him a few short days of light-hearted bullying before he realises that he's going to need proof.

So he waits, a whole four seasons, each full moon that passes egging him on, increasing his determination – his excitement – at the prospect of seeing the incomplete legend unfold once more before his eyes and proving them all wrong.

(Somehow, it is still about sorrow, the plan that he formulates a distraction from an empty house and a busy heart.)

.

.

 _Two for joy…_

Killian can barely wait for the sun to set the next year, sneaking down to the old oak tree before the light even disappears beneath the horizon. It's as warm as he remembers it being the last time, but he wonders if the whole thing was a fluke. It causes him to shuffle nervously as he paces back and forth, running over the plan in his head as the light dims.

Wait until they're all in the water, grab a cloak, run. Wait, grab, run.

The last point was pivotal.

But luck is on his side again tonight it would seem, and he watches as a flock of ten or so swans, both black and white, glide with grace, descending upon the surface of the water. He smiles to himself, and begins to feel jittery (not that he wasn't already), and perhaps a little too eager.

But he waits. Step one.

They paddle to the same pebbled bank that he remembers from last time, and several small bursts of flashing white silver twinkle in the night, as the swans metamorphose into their human counterparts. He sees them once again, the full length feathered cloaks that shroud them from head to toe swung off from their shoulders, letting them fall delicately upon the ground. In a few short moments they are all drifting back into the water with the same simplicity that he remembers all those moons ago.

But he waits.

Killian doesn't really know anything about the hearing of swans, doesn't know if it is different with human ears, and none of the stories for all their sinister details even broach the subject. He doesn't want to chance his luck, and smothering the warm, anxious bubbling inside of him before it gives him away, he focuses on his stratagem; he creeps.

Fortunately, he knows the lake well, it being safe on every other day of the year, and he steps through woods (with less silence than he would like), but he can still see the women off in the distance and he is far too entrenched in tree and shadow and feels no threat.

And they are lying there, black cloaks and white coats just within reach, gathered on the ground so innocuously, glittering impossibly in the dim like a warning – they are his proof. He picks the smallest of the lot, thinking it'll be easier to carry back with him; lighter to steal with quick fingers. They are so far away from him in the water, and it so close, and so he enacts step two of his (really rather simple) plan.

Grab.

Killian knows a lot about the cloaks, of course he does. While he knows nothing of their hearing, he knows everything about the feathers. They're woven into every single one of the celebrations of the springtime festivals, like King Arthur's sword, like dragon's fire, or a pegasus' wings, they are central to the whole thing. Dances, puppet shows and tavern shanties carry their message with admonition (of course) but with also a tip; a clue; a weapon.

The white feathers in his hands are softer than he was expecting, careful to double check that he is holding it at all and that it is not dissolving through his hands. Dry and soft, yet hard and tightly woven together, and he runs his fingers over them wondering how it is all knit and forged (and yet knowing it is magic). It's a splashing from far, far off behind that startles him, and he reluctantly draws his focus away from the cloak, but as he turns in place, spinning on his heel to make a mad dash, he is stopped.

Stopped in shock or fear he has no clue, but one of them – one of the women, the swans – is standing about twenty feet in front of him.

He's also not sure if his mouth drops open because he's scared; he's been caught, or if he's floundering for some words to say in defence; in apology, or, whether it's because she's completely naked.

Killian may have been too in awe of the whole thing last time to care about their lack of clothing, but this time she's far too close, and he finds himself looking staunchly at her face, desperately trying not to look or see anywhere else. She's eyeing him suspiciously, watching and calculating his intentions, and the two of them stare, Killian's mouth slightly agape, feeling his pulse liven for a multitude of reasons.

But it must be written all over his own face – the tension and the not knowing what to do – because it makes her smile, a wry sort of thing, a smile curling her cheeks as she watches the jaw he can feel clenching.

Neither of them move.

The third and most pivotal part of his plan is failing with every second and all he can do is stand there.

But he can't run now, doesn't know what will happen when he turns his back on her (if his feet will even carry him) doesn't know why she hasn't alerted the others, doesn't know how long they've been staring because all he can feel is the thrum of the feathers in his hands and the blood in his ears.

There is also a significant part of him that can't seem to move, can't even shuffle his feet, because he is dumbstruck - literally stunned by how stunning she is. That is one part at least that the stories got right. The swan – the girl, really – in front of him is beautiful, long hair more silvery than gold in the moonlight. The worst part is she looks about his age.

(It allows his mind to wander, to wonder.)

But her cloak in his hands is a weapon.

Tearing his eyes away from her face at last, he looks back at the feathers in his arms. The legends always said that any man who possessed one of the cloaks had control over the transformed swan to whom it belonged – that particular part of the story always bitten as though an unpleasant taste on his mother's tongue.

Killian hears the sound of pebbles, the sound of her feet treading closer to him and when his eyes dart back up to hers, his eyelashes flickering, heart immovable in his throat, she is still smiling knowingly at him, unabashed.

And extends her hand.

He's not quite sure how the cloak in his hands is supposed to control her (maybe it's not hers at all) but she doesn't even seem concerned with this contemplation of his, as his fingers grip the cloak (his proof) with more conviction with every step she takes towards him.

The conviction fades so quickly he wonders if it was ever there at all as her fingers meet the cloak, pulling it without a fight from his grasp.

It's definitely her cloak though, and the part of the tale that was supposed to give the most hope, the most protection to it's human protagonists, dawns on Killian as another by-product of whispers and hearsay. She's still looking at him as she swings the cape over her shoulders, still right in front of him. Killian averts his eyes over her head and away from looking at the naked stretch of her body, with a scratch behind his ear.

And yet again, the stories let him down. With the feathers still around her shoulders, she does not disappear in the twinkle of light, does not transform in front of his eyes.

And yet again, she must read it on his face.

"It only works when the hood's up."

The sound of her voice should startle and surprise him, it should probably also make him run, but –

"I'm beginning to think there's hardly any of this legend that's actually true."

"Yeah, well, we prefer it that way."

Killian feels no less flustered now that she's clothed, his curiosity only increasing with every little thing he discovers is an untrue stanza or a distorted episode. Her own tone of voice is so calm and casual, only proving further the misunderstanding between her world and his – she doesn't see him as a physical threat, nor does she seem preoccupied about luring him anywhere to drown.

"What else have we mere mortals got wrong?"

The teasing in his voice is unbidden, fear almost entirely replaced by intrigue (fear eradicated by attraction), as she peers back behind her towards the others of her kind. But she does not appear alarmed by their proximity and she turns back to him with an audacious and honest smile of her own.

"If I told you, I'd have to kill you."

"Isn't that part of the plan anyway? Drag me into the depths of the lake?"

But she doesn't answer him, only sets him with an eye roll and a smug smile that huffs through her nose and curves through her cheeks in a way that double-crosses him.

Killian spent an entire year thinking about proving to everyone he'd ever known what really happened with the swans on the lake, and every thought of that is driven from his mind that night by the girl. She doesn't go back into the water with the others, treading instead through the trees just beyond the shoreline aimlessly while he does the same beside her. But it is less like following and more like a circumstantial companionship, each hesitantly asking questions of the other.

Their answers even more hesitant.

Killian can't help but try and flirt with her, teasing her light-heartedly even if his mannerisms sometimes betray his self-assurance (he is only sixteen after all). Oddly enough, she seems more content to talk with him when he does, shrugging it off easily, but the more they talk the more wary of him she seems to grow. Killian's own hesitations fade with her continued unthreatening presence, but her confidence seemed to lie in dealing with his more flirtatious attempts.

But after a while it doesn't surprise him when her reasoning reveals itself in the form of another question - it is what she has heard and expects from his kind, it is what she expects from men.

( _"Really? Is that the best you've got?" "Oi!"_ )

She tells him little of the mechanics of the night, even less of her world beyond, mostly answering his questions with ones of her own, confused and curious of the world of men.

Killian has nothing to hide of his world.

(Except that he says nothing of Liam, nothing of his parents.

Then again, she never mentions family either.)

He learns that just as his people have stories of hers, the swans and her world have tales of humans. More fables, more facts and more warnings about men, and she tells him this through shrewd eyes and fidgety hands, as though telling him she knows, telling him her guard is up, and that she won't be taken for a fool.

And though it seems strange with their caution so at odds – his dwindling while hers rises – they continue wandering and talking in that way teenagers seem to know best: with unsure intentions but surer determination.

But she, Emma, she latches on to just how scared the townsfolk are of her swans, redirecting the question back again and again. Inquisitive and enquiring about the dances and fables, festivals and songs they tell of her own people, and perhaps it's a terrible idea, perhaps they'll get caught.

(Perhaps it's a trap for him rather than her.)

Their feet hang from one of the old oak tree's roots, toes disappearing beneath the black-dark lake, and Killian makes her a promise.

.

.

 _Three for a girl…_

A lot happens the year that Killian turns seventeen, and a lot will happen in the next, and it all makes him feel a little scattered around the heart, a little older around the eyes. He spent a great many weeks thinking of Emma, now not so keen on sharing the truth of the swans, more content to keep his secrets to himself.

(It's perhaps in part that he no longer has anyone to share his secrets with.)

And he thought of her, until he didn't.

Truthfully, it was easy to forget her from day to day, real life so far removed from that peaceful night that it's almost a dream to him, treated as such in his memory at least. He does not think of her that first night he finds himself sleeping secretly in his neighbour's stables, does not think of her when his stomach gives up growling in favour of clawing.

(But he misses her, in a way that's difficult to pinpoint while she still feels like a distant dream. The year has truly weighed him down and the helplessness makes him question what happened, everything that's every happened.)

Winter fades, the snows melt but do not take their chill with them, and the thoughts of Emma, of the swan-girl, creep more often into his thoughts with every daffodil and other Spring flowers.

And when that night comes, and the sun disappears beneath the line of the trees, Killian steals more that day than a loaf of bread and a few spare coin.

He steals a dress.

This time when he gets to the lake, he sees her standing beneath the oak tree waiting for him. He takes a selfish moment to watch her as his feet crunch loudly enough to give him away.

He'd forgotten in his wallowing just how beautiful she was, just how _real_ she was. His memories almost entirely made up of the curve of her cheek bones and the taunt of her eyes. Seeing her now, anxious, cloaked, and arms crossed against her, he curses himself for not remembering just how she looked, a lump in his ribcage that is unfamiliar chiding him for it. He curses himself for not remembering her hesitations, her secrecies, her existence beyond the magical.

The snapping of a twig gives him away, and she turns so quickly that her cloak reveals a little too much of the skin beneath.

"Killian?" She hisses it into the dark, impatiently and curious, and when he whispers back a reply, the tension does not leave her shoulders or her brow.

She doesn't look as happy about the idea as she had when he suggest it last time, doesn't seem happy at all, restless instead and sceptical, as though the last year had allowed her to overthink the whole thing. But she fidgets less when she sees him, suddenly steeling herself and monitoring her own behaviour. When he steps closer, smiling gently at her, she tucks gold hair behind an ear and looks him over, cataloguing changes.

(Longer hair, a thinner face, more weathered clothes, brown coat too narrow for his shoulders. He hopes it doesn't matter.)

"Are we sure about this?"

She asks with a deep sigh, her tone about as gentle as her agitation.

"Do you trust me?"

But she doesn't answer the question. And Killian can see just how uncomfortable she is to know that what she does next is not an answer, is not even a blurry indication of whether she trusts him.

She is concrete resolve, stubborn determination.

She drops her cloak. It falls to the ground in muted sound, but Killian looks immediately away, distractedly moving his tongue over the corner of his lip as she grabs the clothes from him hastily. Killian only turns away, muttering something about giving her privacy, and the only reply she gives him is an equally muttered response about _humans._

It wasn't something fancy when he'd picked it up - in fact that was the point - some patchwork thing of deep reds, but it suits her, and it's tight and flattering, but no where near as revealing as her usual. Killian grins at her when she shows him, as she tries to move it about, tripping a little over her feet and struggling to figure out how it is supposed to sit. His eyes deliberately rake over her, obviously yet innocently, and nodding encouragingly with his eyebrows high in his hair, lips turned in an impressed frown. She pushes past him, failing to hide her own laugh.

( _"Seriously?!" "What? It's what everyone wears." "You better hope you're right." "You're not as threatening as you think you are, lass."_ )

It could have gone one of two ways.

Emma could have either found the whole exercise daunting, the sparkling lights and loud music, the drunken dancing and the raucous behaviour of the people overwhelming. He certainly wouldn't have blamed her. It was a strange mixture of fun, joy, and celebration, while the lyrics were sinister, the feathered costumes crude and cruel.

Alternatively, Emma could have taken it in her stride, entertained by the stories being dramatically told to groups of small children, silently keeping the anomalies to herself, weaving through the people and the markets eagerly.

And, of course, she was a combination of the two.

The thing he noticed most were the reactions to her from those around them.

They barely noticed anything different about her.

Or more specifically, most didn't notice.

He saw the looks no doubt as often as she did, the looks from the other boys as Emma and Killian meandered through the stalls of silver door ornaments, stylistic swan shapes meant to protect those who lived inside. The boys were inexplicably drawn to her.

Only, Killian knew why. She was far too beautiful to go unnoticed, her hair golden in the scattered torch light, and try though he did to pick something for her to wear that wouldn't draw attention, the effort was futile –

She was more swan than woman, more temptation than otherwise.

The attention only made her stand taller.

Every time someone leered towards her with silent, watchful eyes, she put more distance between her and Killian, as though trying to prove a point. The faith she gave him clearly only extended so far, more and more suspicious of him with every subtle stare she received. She watched him when she thought he wouldn't notice, still with thoughts in her eyes, cynicism in every feature of her face.

She had not been like this last time, but he couldn't blame her – she was in his world now, the lake was her safety net.

However, it never occurred to Killian that she was seeing just as much as she was seeking.

They chose to sit high upon an old stone wall that climbed uphill, sloping through the centre of town (from the guild hall to the town square) mugs of fresh but flat cider warming their hands. That is where they are when she asks. Really, he should have expected it – in between pulling and grinning at her from musician to stall, trying to make her smiles a little freer, her thoughts far from the looks of others, she'd been looking at him.

"You're different."

She'd been watching him for longer than he'd acknowledged, watching him with a particular thought in mind. Killian tried to ignore it, the look bordering too closely to pity, scared that it would tip in that direction.

He drinks from his own mug to stall, looking down at her shoeless feet as he does, toes stretching out before her.

"Different to what?"

"Last year, you were different last year."

The large gulp he takes of his drink, diverting his attention to somewhere far away from her, does nothing to dissuade her questions.

"What happened over this last year that you're not telling me?"

"It matters not."

The conversation makes him uncomfortable, but he cannot find it in himself to be too blunt with her, doesn't want to ruin the happy medium they have found. They barely know one another, Killian barely knows who he is this year, and he would really rather they didn't get into it.

(But he wants to know her, far more than he wants to know himself and it is a conundrum – reveal more than he would like, or not bond with her on this cool night.)

"Okay, it's fine, you don't need to tell me. It's just –"

He turns to look at her and while her voice is soft and whispered, it is nothing compared to the expression on her face. It is all concern and further confusion, and that thought in her eyes is like a knife to his throat. She's prying, she knows it, and his jaw is twitching but he realises that his isn't pity, it's understanding.

"Just what?"

"You look… starved? Or something, I dunno. In more ways than one."

It's understanding, it's compassion. It's a relief to Killian.

"I've had a change of… circumstance." The word feels too big in his mouth, an uncomfortable shape, taking too many syllables to say. He's barely explained it to anyone, drifted out of his old life to the point where it no longer needed voicing to anyone, and the one word hangs bitterly in the air.

This time she times a sip of her drink with his sigh, keeping her face towards him, waiting, drinking and waiting.

And he tells her. He doesn't mean to, but he does. Tells her in no certain terms the torture of the past year, vagueness his friend - mumbling through the harshness that is his father disappearing, the easiness with which he fell into stealing because no one would hire an unskilled boy. He keeps it abrupt, keeps it factual, and all she does is watch him, drinking, as though each word confirms the thoughts in her head.

There is no pity, even as she whispers an apology that she should not feel. He doesn't know what else to say, so he smiles at her instead, a small sad thing that doesn't last, and doesn't hide anything at all.

Part of Killian wonders if this is magic too, the way she has compelled his confidence simply by being in front of him, simply by sitting next to him in the dark of night. There's something about it that makes him want to say more, wants to tell her of where it is he is disappearing to in a few weeks, but he doesn't want to change the mood of the night anymore than he already has.

It almost feels good to have someone know how he is, even while they both know she can do nothing to help him (not in the practical sense). Almost. He still feels unsettled, heart lodged as uncomfortably in his chest as the reluctant truth had been clawing out of his throat.

Killian has had enough of wallowing, does it enough on every other day of the year, too much to do it to her now. The look on her face, rolling her bottom lip in her teeth, in contemplation, makes him want something he does not think he can have. She is so much brighter than his feelings, so much softer than the world he lives in, and suddenly Killian is determined to forget himself in lieu of knowing her.

He leaves his clay mug on the ledge, leaping down with a thud upon the road, cleaning his hands on the leg of his pants, grinning up at her mischievously.

"I'm not sure I like that look. What now?" She asks, playfully suspicious of the smile he now wears, finishing her own cider and jumping off the wall after him, as he asks with a dramatic flourish -

"Would the lady care to dance?"

There's the distinct possibility they spun one time too many, and bumped into too many other dancers, because his head is dizzy and his stomach hurts from laughter, and for the first time in a year Killian has well and truly forgotten. It is not like all the other days forgetting the reality of Emma, the existence of the girl who should be living beneath feathers.

No, this time he forgets everything else.

He forgets that tonight he will be heading back into the woods to his makeshift home, he forgets that he wonders if this will be the last time he will see her. He forgets that she is supposed to be an enemy to the people around them, forgets the dances he used to know the steps to.

Her laughter is unfair, and he doesn't remember it being like this, all teases and slyness it had been and wasn't anymore. There is no sense of distrust in her expression, no curious thought she is trying to pry out of him. It's just her smile, genuine and soft, as she steps backwards hitting another poor girl as she bows; it's the feel of her hands, genuine and soft, it's the blush on her face as she avoids eye contact with him the moment he's too close.

It's the sound of her giggle in his ears.

Everything else is background noise.

The dance is lively enough to keep their spirits high, twirling and racing into positions, while neighbouring dance partners laugh and spin in just as little coordination as they do. And even when the dance is over, and his feet are sorer than his heart once was, slumped against the wall of the bakery for air, Killian forgets who they should be to each other.

(He forgets that he usually feels older than he is.)

The laughter dwindles from her face first, as they rest a shoulder each against the old blue building, but it does not disappear entirely, it leaves little crinkles in its wake. He leans in a little closer noting with a mixture of delight and dread the way the warm air thickens as he does so, and the way her eyelashes flicker. But the move was not that way inclined (not intentionally anyway) and he only looks at her curiously, an eyebrow raised to question the suddenly very serious look on her face.

"Aren't you tempted?"

Her question is exhaled with a puff of the air she has not yet caught, breathing still rattled by their dancing. They are quiet as he contemplates this, the noise of the town square behind them a haze, the happy wheeze of their breathing louder. This adventure apparently cleared nothing up about her apprehension of humans.

He plays dumb, looking at her lips as he responds.

"Tempted by what?"

(And they are still answering questions with questions.)

Maybe he's not entirely playing dumb. She must know, must see it when he looks at her that he's seeing something he likes, something he would want. But the question is layered, and Killian isn't quite sure which temptation she means.

Emma glares at him impatiently for his indirect response, cocking her head to the side and watching him with her thoughts still in a whirr.

She pauses.

"You really don't care, do you? You know, about, well – all of _that, this_."

"Does that surprise you?"

He says it though he knows that it does surprise, knows that she's confused that he doesn't leer at her the way she's been warned about, the way she's witnessed tonight. He flirts where he knows it is harmless (but that's about all he knows how to do). Killian is far from perfect and he is still a human, and he knows exactly what it is the others see, knows the bait, the want - because he feels it.

It's just that there's something else he wants – he wants to feel that glimmer of something that happens when her soul grazes his, the one that makes his blood impatient in his own body. The one that asks for more than another glimpse of her skin.

He's still not sure if that makes it worse.

The words are a whisper upon his cheek.

"Thank you."

It's her move to make, and she does make it, slowly, stepping up on hesitant toes to kiss him. It isn't awkward, it isn't rushed and he wonders if it should be, if it should taste of confusion and feel like a rash mistake. Killian can't even tell if the kiss, the way her lips fall into his, are a part of her thanks – that is until his fingers trail tentatively along her jaw and it makes Emma sigh unevenly into him.

It's only partly a thank you.

It's not a promise.

But it is hushed, a silent barb in their trap. Chasing her lips and her waist and her hair, pushing her back up softly against the stone wall, their mouths meeting just as often as their noses and Killian's cheeks burn. Should they be more wary of one another as her hands find his face, should they fumble through the feeling and be rougher?

But the myths about swans and the myths about men aren't all true.

So they never really catch their breath.

And while he may have spent the last year momentarily forgetting her, he doubts there's any chance of that this time, the taste of the snare - of Emma - too real upon his tongue. And he's not sure what he thought the kind of spell kissing a swan would cast, but surely it was nothing like this, surely it was nothing like the way her hands moved through his hair as softly as her lips. He is caught in a trap he never expected.

The stories never warned him about this.

.

.

 _Four for a boy…_

Killian is perhaps more nervous about going to the lake than he ever has been.

It's less to do with the chill in the air and the storm hanging in the atmosphere, less to do with the two years it's been since he saw her and more to do with what he's wearing - crisp white pants with a black shirt and vest. He feels less and less like the boy who used to come.

Which is somewhat a good thing.

But it has been two years, he had warned her as she'd stood back on the shores of the lake, her feathers once more across her shoulders that he didn't know how long he'd be. She seemed to have nodded almost distractedly when he told her, but betrayed no other thought, and despite the missing her and the memories, it had been a good two years.

( _"Don't worry, I'll be back, you won't get rid of me that easily." "A girl can only dream."_ )

Liam's influence helped more than he had dared to hope it would (he had sorely missed his brother) and he's almost excited to show Emma who he is now, how he is better than he used to be.

Less starved.

And he'd thought of her just as often as he knew he would. Killian was happy learning the ropes (literally), his life as a midshipman giving him a purpose he'd never had before, a purpose he hadn't known he needed, but his fellow shipmates spoke often of lasses left behind. Of sweethearts and more licentious girls, some for a coin, some for a wide enough smile.

All he could think of was Emma.

Killian told no one, let them think what they wanted, and let him think of her waist beneath his hands, her skin peering out from beneath white plumage as she left, a sad smile on her face, traces of a kiss on his cheek. He could not say to the others that he had a girl back home, could not call her anything at all. But he had touched her this time, and she lived in the memory of his skin as well as his eyes.

Though, he made a point of reminding himself (time and time again) how little he knew her, how one long kiss between two teenagers in the shadows does not a romance make. Reigning in how he felt did little good.

The crack of thunder wakes him from his reverie.

And the storm breaks before he gets to the water, the leaves suddenly loud around him, rain breaking from the sky and crashing into the trees. It means nothing to him at first, Spring is usually a wet season, rain helping the plants heal from Winter. He does not remember that he used to see the weather on this night of the year as an omen. Despite the sun already having set, the woods somehow feel too dark, the air between him and the trees wider, more sinister than they should be.

Perhaps he has been away too long and doesn't remember the woods well enough, perhaps it's because there are no stars.

But it isn't too dark to spot the figures running through the thicket.

And Killian halts.

It startles him, senses suddenly on high alert. He's never seen another soul here on this night, and a sense of dread overtakes him, just as disbelief does. Beyond the sound of the rain there is nothing else, not the footfalls of the other people running through the trees, not the wind and Killian starts to believe he imagined it -

The wind. He can see the branches swaying, can feel it cooling the water on his skin as it falls down from his hair to his face.

But he cannot hear it.

He swears aloud to himself before he runs, down his old short cut and only vaguely in the same direction as the other figures – in the direction of the lake. His feet make a sound on the leafy floor even while nothing else does, but it draws no comfort, he is too anxious to get to the water's edge, too worried about the shadows that had run passed him but not seen him.

The moment he breaks out of the line of the trees, noise is immediately returned to the world, hitting him with the full force of the wind, to the point where it nearly knocks him over.

Out here, where the moon usually shines with a simple light upon the water, it is dark, blue and heavy in the air, not a single sign of light, and he wonders how he can see in the dim at all. His hand reflexively reaches towards his side for his sword, cursing once more out loud when he realises he does not have it.

Two years with it by his side at all times and he chose the worst time to leave it behind.

And cruelly he panics for a moment wondering if Emma is okay, hoping against hope that the swans have not come tonight, hoping that whatever magic is afoot she is safe from. The myths had proven so wrong in the past few years, and knowing Emma, knowing the feel of her gentle touch, he finds himself needing to protect their secrecy (protect her secrecy).

(It is cruel for reasons he does not yet know.)

And it is cruel because the moment the thought occurs to him, she appears, climbing around the oak tree, stopping still in her tracks to stare at him.

His memory is a sore substitute, and the two years have been very, _very_ kind to her if the shape beneath her cloak is anything to go by, even if her hair is stuck to the side of her face with the rain.

"Hello, love."

"Go."

Admittedly, after two years, he had not imagined _that_ being the first thing she would say to him, shouted through the hissing sound of the storm. It throws him, but he only questions it by squinting his eyes and turning his head at her quizzically.

"I mean it, Killian, go – come on, you can't _be_ here."

She still hasn't moved, two hands on two branches, shielding something, her body annoyingly visible through the crack in her cape. He only questions her more, this time verbally.

"What is it? What's wrong?"

Emma is visibly panicking, eyes unsteady, glancing to and from his own eyes hastily and her words fall silent through an open mouth (failed attempts). And Killian cannot stand it, he has missed her, and she is making him more nervous than he already is. However, his started movement towards her set her off again and she begins shooing him once more, physically trying to get him to leave. When her hands collide with his chest she does not pull him towards her as he had so frequently imagined she would, she pushes him away.

She becomes impatient with the way he will not listen, trying to turn him around, tone becoming more and more forceful.

And a burst of light erupts into the sky.

( _"Killian, please, I'm begging you – go back."_ )

It isn't thunder, too blue for that.

He looks over her shoulder this time, past her head and down the length of the shoreline, and what he sees leaves him frozen in place.

The blurred, distant figures that he had seen before were real - _are_ real, and very visible, wading in the shallows - only, they are no longer alone.

He almost confuses the figures for a moment as two swans in human form until he notices that one of them is most definitely not female – a boy barely older than himself – his face and body silhouetted in the night, clothes stripped and abandoned on the shore in a heap with their feathers.

Another crack, another blue light.

And Killian feels a chill that no longer has anything to do with the wind, watching in horror for that thing that the fifteen year old version of himself had wanted – for the stories to come true. The women swarm out from underneath the water singing, _laughing,_ circling, hair sticking down the length of their necks, no longer seductive, no longer alluring.

Now it is all feral.

The man, unfamiliar to Killian, does not appear threatened, and seems to be in a mindless stupor.

Until suddenly, he isn't.

And he is screaming, and flailing, uselessly shouting for help, the swans laughter not loud enough to drown it out – but they do drown him.

Killian attempts to move, instinct telling him to race from their hidden spot and down into the water to help, to stop the thrashing as the boy struggles against the slivers of light and clawed hands of birdlike talons. But Emma's own hands have found themselves in the open collars of his vest, fiercely gripping him with fists, and a sad and resigned expression on her face, bare heels digging into the pebbles, keeping him cemented in place, keeping him from helping.

She won't look at him, eyes making contact with the base of his throat, but it doesn't matter Killian's own eyes are busy watching a boy drown. He barely feels his hands buried and twisted in the feathers, fingers gripping her arms beneath, grappling for what he's not sure. It keeps her there, it keeps her fingers curled against his drenching clothes, while the rain slips over her feathers with ease.

(He's grappling for her to ground him to reality, from being swept away in the folk tale.)

The boy does not go quietly.

And the sound of his undignified shrieks somehow linger long after he's disappeared beneath the surface, long after Killian has lost sight of him, bouncing against the surrounding hillside as laughter fades.

Fades to the sound of rain.

He doesn't know what to say and neither does Emma, the two of them waiting for someone or something to burst the silence, now that the bubble has been burst. But neither of them want to. Killian still for his part is in shock, allowing the rain to continue its downpour along his face and into his clothes not even thinking of it.

His mind is otherwise occupied.

And it all sticks uncomfortably.

He wonders as Emma's head tilts up to read him, whether stories still count as myths when you know them to be true, when you have seen them for yourself.

When you've heard them slip and scream beneath water.

And truthfully he isn't sure he knew how he would feel when he finally looked back at Emma. Would he feel fear, would he feel horror, contempt? Would he feel betrayed and cautious? He holds off looking at her, fearing that the feelings he has cultivated the last two years, sleeping uncomfortably aboard an old wooden ship, the ones that lived there welcome to do so, will suddenly hurt him.

So, he closes his eyes, searching for the courage to look.

Attempting to find the courage for something anyway, because the truth is he isn't scared of her. Perhaps he should be, perhaps he should hate her, perhaps the old song verses should ring in his mind, the ones that tell him of their seductions, of the way they will do anything to get them into the water. Killian has never thought himself a greedy man, but he still wants for something and maybe that is cause enough, maybe he is next.

It is a trap, don't go to the lake.

But he feels none of this (and he keeps his eyes shut because he knows he should), only finding himself feeling sixteen again and wondering what is true and what isn't. The only thing he knows is true is that despite what's happened and how they feel, he and Emma are still holding each other in the relentless rain, and the only thing Killian has are questions.

His voice breaks a little as he breaks the silence, eyes still firmly shut, fingers still in soft feathers.

"What else have we mere mortals got wrong?"

Her voice is as raw as his.

"If I told you, I'd have to kill you."


	2. v, vi, vii

_A/N: I meant to have this up ages (and ages) ago. Blaming illness and life for that. Thank you to everyone who reviewed you are so sweet and your messages mean everything to me_

 _._

 _._

 _Five for silver  
Six for gold  
Seven for a secret, never to be told_

 _._

 _._

That night never really leaves him.

It plays as familiar in his recesses as the stories, a sonorous pierce like the violin, words of warning humming in their resonance. It is the thrum of a chord expertly hit – a danger foretold, a memory rewound and replayed.

He should have taken more caution, more heed, less abandon, he shouldn't have gone to the lake.

Beware the bathing swans.

But he cannot stop thinking of it, and although it stays with him, it never really does so with any accuracy.

If you asked Killian, he would have said that the rain never made any noise at all, that the thick mud had not drenched through his boots leaving with it a chill that lasted for days. No nervous beating heart, no mute and violent lightning.

No cruel confusion.

He remembers the scream, though.

The way it strangled and bubbled black, cutting through wind and water – and everything else.

Well, almost everything else.

He remembers Emma.

There is a painful clarity with which he can still feel her fingers holding on to him, taut and just upon his chest, holding him still in his disbelief. Every night on the ship, old and creaking, the canvas of his hammock ripples and pulls down the sides of his arms and it's almost like a phantom grip. It makes it worse, it holds the memory to him.

If he had anyone to explain it to, about the feelings raging within him, it would be difficult. (He's not sure Liam would understand). It's not like he's never seen a man die before; it's not as though someone he believed in has never let him down; it's not as though he's never been lied to.

Not that Emma has ever lied to him – she has never been direct enough with him for that, each clue and hint so vague that it never gave enough away to even be a concocted half-truth.

She is not a lie, not a half-truth, at best she is a white lie – deceit by omission – wrapped in the shade itself, but never maliciously; never harmful trickery.

Something about it clings to him and he doesn't know why – he has seen worse horrors, seen plenty of bodies slip underneath the waves, either in the throes of life or the memory of it.

The sea air helps Killian, the whip of wind in the crow's nest numbs the feeling a little, yet it doesn't matter how many times his hands callous, how many nights he stands watch with nothing but the hum of his brother-come-captain echoing around him, the end result is the same.

That night never leaves him.

He blames the magic, the myth, the little boy in him that built his own meaning into the stories from a heavy heart and a lacking home.

He never once blames her.

He remembers the way she'd turned from him with nothing but whispered contrition, offering nothing but her receding figure for the pinch of his confused brow. Killian remembers the way she left him without another word, water running down and over the bridge of his nose and into his open mouth.

He remembers it every night when for twelve moons the full moon shines without her.

And on the thirteenth he takes his leave on land with the others, shipmates crawling into the taverns and arms of willing partners, but he travels the few miles from ship to childhood glen.

Ship to black-lake shore.

There's a small part of Killian that wishes he could leave this full-mooned night to his past, tuck it away somewhere in the teenage years he'd rather not recall, the swan he cannot see with the parents he cannot either.

And there is an element of frustration, wishing that he could simply be carefree and indulge as his friends do with their lads and lasses, but there are the ghosts of her hands, the edge of nails creeping as they card through the back of his hair that he cannot shake. He cannot scratch it away – doesn't really want to try – cannot free himself from where she's touched.

(Physically and otherwise.)

–

 _Five for silver…_

He takes it to antagonise her.

Well, he takes it to break down as many illusions as he can, shatter as many myth-laden rhymes that still ring in his ears as possible. Truthfully, the only way he can think of getting those answers is to irritate them out of her.

In part he resents the secrecy, resents that the things that he _thought_ he understood, but were really just as false as the myths themselves.

The irony is not lost on him either, he is well aware of the fact that it had been exactly that that had drawn him in in the first place with young fingers clenched upon a wading rock, his fingers clenched upon a feathered cape.

So, he's a little later in getting to the lake the next year. He doesn't dawdle through the markets, but Killian does stop and purchase something from one of the stalls, faded memories of Emma spinning with him as he passes through.

He has formulated another plan.

It's less simple than the last one he'd had (– wait, grab, run –) but just as dependent upon the whims of Emma, and once the glimmer of silver catches his eye he knows it will spark the reaction he wants, knows it will spark her ire.

He is eager to get to the bottom of this.

(Eager to see her again.)

Killian reaches the oak tree long before he realises, his thoughts having eaten away at his travel time, and as he steps out from the shadows into the moonlight, the fingers of his left hand curl anxiously around the silver item in his pocket, sharp edges digging into his palm.

(He might be gripping it too tightly, too nervously.)

Once again the weather matches the stillness of the lake, no ripple through water or air, trees and tension hanging limply.

They're in the lake already, always in the same spot, smiling and calm, appearances once more deceiving. Except Emma. She is not there, she is not floating far out with the others, not over on the shoreline. He can't see her anywhere, and the flickering feeling of hope he had, of desire and yearning, kicks at him even harder, almost punishing him for having the feeling in the first place.

But he does have the feeling – all tied up in hope and yearning – and it is what keeps him there, waiting for some time.

"I should've known it was you."

The violent kick of his heart is because he's been startled, although that is not the only reason. Spinning on his heels, pebbles chinking beneath him, he watches as Emma slinks out from the treeline and into the moonlight towards him.

He had the same thought last time, and the time before that – a year is a long time, and it's too long to miss someone you barely know. Too long to miss Emma. Because every time he sees her she is more beautiful, growing into her cheekbones more with every moon and he doubts he is the only man who has looked at her and inwardly cursed.

A knot catches in his throat at the sight of her, rough and tight, and it's unpleasant but not nearly as unpleasant as the look on her face. She almost looks disappointed to see him, confused and weary – as though not seeing him would have been easier.

The knot turns to bitterness, matching her own physical tone, and he enacts his plan, speaking with a sour tongue.

"And what would you have done if it wasn't?"

Emma looks as though she doesn't know what to say. She halts her steps towards him, disappointment still on her face. She's unimpressed. She's glaring at him through narrow eyes now, reading his own puffed-up stance, the thumbs in his belt loops, with immense dissatisfaction.

And it's exactly what he wanted.

"So, you've come here for what, exactly?" Her delivery dry and off-hand, and he meets it syllable to syllable.

"Answers. All I want is your honesty, Emma, you have to tell me something."

He watches her gaze flicker towards the other swans as though wary of how their conversation might carry, their harsh quiet a risk she's not willing to take.

"No, I don't. I don't _have_ to tell you anything."

Without another glance at him, she disappears back into the trees that she came from, the length of her cape whispering behind her along the ground, not even snagging on the sticks beneath it.

And of course, Killian follows her.

He ups the volume of his voice and his own ire a little, now safely between denser woods – she simply walks, under low branches and seemingly unfazed by his ensuing.

She is determined to give him nothing.

( _"I watched – no passively stood by – while a man drowned. Surely that deserves some sort of explanation?"_ )

And he is determined to push. He's determined to match her attitude, her feigned indifference, with his own – but he's not doing a very good job of it, he knows that. His voice sounds far too imploring to truly sound angry.

She doesn't turn back to him.

"Emma."

Until he calls after her with her name. Only at the sound of her name does she stop, swirling on the spot, her feathers moving with her a little but not enough, the pale skin beneath once more a thing to avert his eyes from.

Instead of repeating himself, he rips the silver from his pocket.

The silver swan, its neck curved in a semi figure-eight, does not shine in the dark but it catches Emma's eye all the same.

"Do I even want to know why you brought that with you?"

She recognises it for sure, the superstitious talisman hung from their doors, their protection, their security against evil lurking swans. The shape of it is (ironically and intentionally) bestial, cruel, the neck so contorted that the swan looks in pain and crippled. The stalls and stalls of them that he walked her through all those years ago had clung to her curiosity, the memory of her touching and running her fingertips along them, along the silver.

The silver that was supposed to repel them. The silver that was supposed to keep their men safe and sound in their beds.

The silver that she touched with ease.

(Another fabled lie.)

"Most likely not, but perhaps I'll need it."

She looks at him with disbelief, seeing the taunt, seeing his lie.

But there's a flicker of something else in her eyes, that if it is hurt it burns into something else almost too quickly for Killian to catch. It turns into a fire, creates cinders from the emotion and that irritation flashes into something deeper.

She is cursing him through the squinch of her eyes.

(But that was his intention.)

"Who was he, love, why did he deserve such a bitter end?"

Emma waves her head a little in frustration, not quite quick enough for a shake, but one that says she is stuck in this conversation against her wishes. She's committed to arguing with him now, and she stalks forward a little, a warning in her look, strength in her voice.

"Don't, okay, he was just a man, just like every other man – a heartless, greedy, lying –"

"Just how many men have you met?"

Another curse spat through her gaze, another step forwards.

"I've met enough."

"Aye, and how many live to tell the tale?"

At this distance there is more than just stubborn secretiveness on her face and the evidence of his provocation, there is hesitation, an uncomfortable fear the size of the knot in his throat.

There is no softness in her delivery, it's snapped, palpable like the moment itself, splintering like the word inside him.

"One."

Oh, but there i _s_ softness in her meaning.

She says it too quickly, taking a deep breath afterwards to fill the instant awkwardness she feels, too late to do anything about it but swallow.

It's Killian's turn to not know what to say. He simply stands there, shock and affection flickering onto his face.

And they are still.

Until she does once more what he is still too unsure of himself to do, the move he still feels he has no right to make – she kisses him.

Her lips meet his at the same time her hands reach his face, but it isn't the slow climb to a kiss that there was last time, there isn't the light heart to pull her onto her toes. He feels it low in his stomach first, an unfamiliar lurch that yanks his heart with him, his gravity off centre.

And all this he feels in the millisecond before he kisses her back.

It is so different to last time.

Her lips pull more at his, more desperate for contact, less content with a curious touch, a timid want, anger still dimly present in the feel of her. And her skin – _her skin_ – is pressed almost bare against him, no corset this time to provide a barrier, no full skirts. Nothing. Nothing but feathers, and the further she presses into him the more the cloak pulls apart and Killian has no idea where to touch. At first, at least, when his mind is thinking too much. He settles on her hair, her feathered waist, settles into the pulling of her lips with his, the tongue between them, the tip of her nose following the warm patterns of his cheeks.

And it is so like last time.

For starters, he is falling.

The feelings overwhelm him in just the same way and he doesn't want to stop kissing her, and like last time, he ignores the way his lungs sting angrily for air. She leans away briefly to _breathe_ , but he chases after her, the palm of his hand feeling the flush of her cheek then her neck, feeling the race of her own pulse mirroring the one pounding through him.

He has wasted too much time. Killian has wasted two years since they last kissed wanting her, missing her, wasted it denying the emotion that curses and courses through him.

He is definitely caught in a trap.

Their anger infused adrenalin fades with each chase of each others lips, their breathlessness making them more languid, their hands softer, their kisses a long deliberate apology instead.

And like last time, it is their breathlessness that stops them. Their lips give up, though their noses linger and bump, their foreheads leaning for support, her lungs puffing and stealing the air from around him.

(Like she steals the gravity from the ground.)

"Killian, why did you bring the silver?"

Emma's voice is softer than he was expecting, hushed against his lips. Her quiet whisper could be because she's out of breath, clutching to his shirt for support. Though, Killian is pretty certain it's because she's nervous about his answer.

He regrets that she feels the need to be.

He leans back, to watch her as he traces his fingertips from the nape of her neck to the apple of her cheek. He whispers back, showing her all of his sincerity as he shakes his head.

"The problem isn't that I don't trust you, it's that I do."

She sighs against his lips, heavily, and he only waits for her response before capturing her breath in his again, feathers beneath fingers.

( _"I know how you feel."_ )

–

Killian never does get the answer he was after.

He gets a different one instead.

One that tells him that thing that he was hoping for is not one-sided.

(And truth about myths become less and less important.)

–

He misses the moon the next year.

He misses it reflected on the black lake, and his mood is foul because of it. The shape still hangs in the sky, bright and white and crisp, but instead its image ripples on an unsettled ocean surface.

He has never hated a storm more than he does the one that delayed them, putting them two weeks behind schedule.

Killian is still stuck at sea, and the feeling of longing is more potent in his chest than it should be. It makes him feel sick.

Liam has left him to his own machinations all day, left him to wallow in the things he will not say. There is nothing to do about it, not really. So he stands on deck, hands held together behind his back, standing and staring out at the poorly lit darkness.

It's not a quiet night either, the crew's laughter dulled but clear enough from deep within the ship, happy once more to have smoother waters.

But even with the noise, and the rustle and flap of sails above his head, Killian hears the song with perfect clarity.

He never thought he'd hear the words out here.

But Liam sings them, muttered beneath his breath, a muddle of right notes and wrong ones. His brother always did have a problem carrying a tune. Whenever he did sing, it was a hapless combination of sloppiness and enthusiasm – wanting to do it, but never caring very much for how well.

It's still a tune he would recognise anywhere.

It makes the muscles in his shoulders tense, his hearing pricked for only it as it echoes sharply across the deck.

It warns him about the swans.

Do not go to the lake, they will lure you underneath.

Liam stops beside Killian, his heavy boots kicking the bottom of the railing as he does, leaning over the edge beside him, staring out at nothing in particular.

"Reminds me of home, that one. Although, I never can remember the words properly, there are always so many different versions of the damn thing," Liam says beside him, turning to face Killian, who does not turn to face him back.

He waits for what he knows is coming, has seen it coming all day with each furtive glance.

"There's a girl, isn't there?"

Killian sighs in response, fingers rubbing distractedly along the stubble he has grown into, sighing because he should have known there was no avoiding this conversation.

His elder brother is not a fool.

"Something like that."

"Figured as much. I couldn't think of anything else that would make you brood quite so intensely."

"I'm not brooding, brother.

It's the only lie he tells him.

He wishes he could be more forthcoming with him about Emma, tell him all the things that he feels and fears. Liam is his brother, and he loves him more than he knows how to say, but he has never been the type to believe myth and nonsense, always far more headstrong and logical.

And there is nothing logical about Emma.

They are each from this world of magic and legend, and he's sure his brother believes the stories to a certain extent, sure he knows something – but he fears Liam would simply dismiss Killian's truth in much the same manner their father had.

(A jovial pat on the shoulder, a well-meaning but dismissive chuckle.)

"Come on, what's the matter then? Does she not feel the same way? Disapproving parents? Promised to someone else?"

None of the above.

Killian picks his words carefully.

"Aye, disapproving is one word for it. We are each from different worlds, I suppose you could say."

He is intentionally vague, and intentionally leads Liam down a safer path.

"Ah, so she's above your station." The comment is followed by a ridiculous wink, one that twitches both eyes shut and Killian resists the urge to mock him for it. "That would explain that one night of the year where when we dock you sneak off with no explanation. Don't look at me like that, little brother, I'm not an idiot. Especially when you come back looking like you haven't slept a wink."

He's thankful that that is as far as Liam prods and pokes, thankful that the questions are followed by a more physical prod – the push of him down below deck to join the others.

It barely distracts him, even Liam's efforts do little to help. In every intentional inclusion and jest Liam throws his way, Killian sees both the affection from his brother, but also the reason behind it; the attempt to distract him from the girl on his mind. It is accidentally self-defeating

And so he cannot escape.

Cannot escape the thoughts of her lips seeking his, the way her voice had sounded. Not the way it had sounded wrought in agitation, caught in his search for explanations, but the way it had sounded afterwards, turmoil long-kissed from her lips. The way that she had spoken, low and calm and croaking in the hours till dawn.

It doesn't matter that he can't remember what they talked about – her clan politics, his naval ones – all he can recall is the way she sounded, the way she felt, his hand in hers.

The longing makes him want.

And he worries the wanting makes him greedy.

He trusts Emma, Killian doubts he could be persuaded otherwise at this point, but he always hears the accursed warnings in his head – lust, and curiosity, and greed.

The distance makes him think more about the fluidity of her cloak, of the way that she twists and turns and does not always take the feathers with her. His mind wanders to the thoughts of her skin, of wondering how closely he could pull her to him. How much longer will they have these chances between them, how many more years will he be left to think of her far more often than he sees her.

He wonders many things.

Like where the line is.

If he wants too much, will the other swans come for him; if he thinks too long and hard about where he wants his touch to move to when they kiss, will the lust – and the curiosity and the greed – will it be his downfall?

There is one part of the song that Liam had not forgotten.

 _Not all treasure is silver and gold,_

 _Sometimes it's a girl, sometimes it's what hidden._

 _Do not go to the lake, even when bidden._

–

 _Six for gold…_

He's late again. Late and heart heavy again.

(Knows his heart will be until he sees her.)

The sun has been set for hours and still the stickiness of the day seems to linger as an unbearable heat, dizzy in the ground itself, making plants and people and the night air shrink in on itself until all that is left is the humidity. It is humid, and the trek he makes from port to town seems longer for it. He misses the sea breeze almost instantly.

It's an auspice.

This night, its weather, it always means something.

There is another kind of tale, from a realm far away, in which old men were said to have watched the birds to predict the future. (More tales of men watching with vested interest the movements of birds). It was said that the way they flew, the way they talked, the time of day, were all in themselves an augury to those who knew how to listen.

Killian wished he knew how to listen.

It was said that different birds told different things, from farmyard poultry to birds of prey. An unkindness of ravens flying low in the fields, the time of the woodpecker, the lone eagle on a clear Summer's day could mean anything, could mean nothing.

But he wished he knew what the omens read for a swan on a humid Spring night.

It is hotter and thicker and more miserable the closer he gets to the water, the trees seem to radiate the feeling, bouncing between bramble until he feels as though he is swimming through the air. The beads of sweat that trickle down his neck do nothing to quench the feeling. And the feeling stresses him – foreboding meaning aside – the feeling is muggy and the feeling is unwelcome and the owls about him barely hoot, eyes closed deep in the branches.

The weather feels miserable.

(Perhaps he is listening.)

She's not there again, not in that same old oak-shaded clearing. There are no other swans around. He cannot see them on the shoreline, cannot hear them splash amongst each other.

But he can see their cloaks upon the pebbles.

That in itself is an ill omen.

Killian's stomach sinks to the ground.

There is the unmistakable sound of feet behind him – the crunch, the rustle – until before he knows it, before he's had time register much more than curiosity, two figures burst through the line of trees.

It never occurred to Killian to move, to hide, to run.

It never occurred to him that Emma might burst through the trees before him, a man hot on her heels.

A man who stumbles into her when she stills in place, frozen at the sight of Killian.

The look of panic creeps onto her face, shock and a million other ideas stringing through her mind in the time it takes him to simply stare and say and do nothing at all. She also says nothing, but her eyes say a mumbled apology, an uttered guilt.

They are both too busy staring at one another, that they jump when the other man speaks.

"What do you think you're looking at, sailor? This doesn't involve you," spoken with an unsurprising lewdness, his hand yanking Emma into him by her waist.

She does nothing but stare at Killian, unnaturally still, a warning in her eyes.

Killian's not sure what he thought the man would say, he doesn't look too much older than him, but there's an unnatural sleekness to his hair, a fineness to the weave of his clothes – and a calmness to his tone that does nothing but make Killian's blood boil.

He cocks his head at the stranger, chin-strong and sure, arrogance bleeding into Killian's image as a different kind of awareness of the situation breaks through the shock.

The sensation prickles through him uncomfortably, draining and dragging his eyes from the man back to Emma. It's not jealousy, and it's not anger, it's not horror, but it's not a foreign feeling.

It's protectiveness.

Emma cannot seem to stop staring at Killian. He has never seen her like this, still and almost unfamiliar in the way her face looks hollow. She does not look as small as her frame however, does not cower beneath the hands of the stranger. She looks dangerous, and calculated. The blonde of her hair seems to melt into her cloak, just as the menace of her intentions melt into the softness of her face.

He should be scared.

And he isn't.

She turns back to the victim at her side, curls a careful hand into his and turning to smile something as cruel and soft as she looks.

"Ignore him, he wants what he can't have," her voice is rich and seductive and it almost echoes, heavy like the thickness of the air around them. Her tone is almost familiar, the low tease, the flirtation is something she's used on him before – but it is not like this. This is something with a different depth, as though she is speaking one voice on top of the other. It is alluring to be sure.

But he's definitely happy that she's never spoken to him like that.

"He wants what you have – me."

He knows what she's doing, still the ironic truth it stings a little. Emma drags the other man by his hand, past Killian and past the oak tree. He must stand there for only a few seconds, staring at the place where she was standing, clenching his right hand in and out of a ball.

But Killian does what he always does – he follows Emma's lead and runs after her.

"Emma stop, you can't do this."

She's not far down the shore, smiling smartly at the well-dressed stranger, luring him down the bank towards the place where their cloaks lie.

The whole façade drops, magic smile disappearing, when she notices Killian running after them well beyond the security of their little cove.

"Go back, Killian."

She's pleading with him this time, face scanning the still water. But he can't – or won't – and he skids a little on the pebbles. He doesn't stop till he reaches her, finding her other hand with his and ignoring the other man completely.

"Please, love, I know this isn't you, I know this isn't what you want."

She rips her hands from both of theirs, and pushes Killian back, back with a soft force that holds little violence, and only desperation. There is a desperation in the way that she argues and pushes, but largely she still appears calm, only the wavering in her eyes and her tone giving her away.

 _("It is me, it's complicated, you don't understand." "Then help me to understand.")_

There is another push at his chest, but it isn't Emma this time, it's the other man.

"The woman said to leave, so I'd really suggest that's what you do."

It's probably a rash move, but Killian actually laughs at this man's nerve, a snark curling at his own lips as Killian pulls his sword out. The shing of it has barely finished ringing before it is pointed quickly at the stranger's throat.

It's almost like a switch, the way his stance turns from soft and pleading, to his well-practiced form. Well, less of the practice and more so experience, five years now of battle and exercise and his wits are as sharp as his blade.

"Don't test me," Killian sneers the words, hisses them quietly, and although it is quietly it is no less threatening.

And the man certainly looks threatened. He looks a coward, all arrogance cut from his face with the simple swing of a blade and he looks younger in the realisation that, with Killian, he is out of his depth.

"What the hell are you doing?" It's Emma, she's hissing back at him, clearly surprised by his impulsiveness. Surprised, but mostly impatient.

He makes to turn back to her, the intention to utter her name and convince her against what she thinks she must do.

But someone else says her name first.

"Emma?"

The voice comes from behind him, calm, and easy – seductive.

Sort of.

He's sure it should be seductive but Killian is more terrified than anything, of the way it hums, and the lure of her voice does nothing but send a shiver down his spine even in the heat.

He turns to meet it anyway, only to be met by a woman much older than Emma, also with blonde hair, completely without her white cloak. She's dripping with water, her hair shaped down the back of her head, down the length of her neck and down the naked exposure of her back.

Perhaps, he is too aware, too conscious and too disenchanted to be drawn in by her. He can see the way the other man's gaze drifts out of the corner of his eye and down her body, looking at the way the wet tendrils curve down her fuller form.

The stories definitely tried to prepare him for this.

For the shiver of fear that trickles down his back, for the way his sword feels heavy in his arm (barely upright, still pointed threateningly, but losing its conviction). He runs through what he knows in his head – the cloaks, the silver, the weapons – but none of that helps him now. They never told him what to do when it gets this far, too focused upon keeping people away from the water in the first place.

What do you do when you're caught between fearing someone, fearing for someone, and fearing for yourself?

"I'm sorry, Ingrid, I've got it covered."

"There's no reason why they can't both come."

Killian hears the sweetness in the woman's voice, the dulcet inflection – the gentle savagery underlying everything.

And he hears the harsh terror in the meaning of her words.

He tries not to focus on it, watching sharply for the way she walks over the ground towards the three of them, her feet as docile as the guise of her voice. Killian notes with discomfort how she eyes them, his heart racing in what feels like slow motion; a galloping terror that seems to take forever.

"Why have you chosen them?"

She says it in plural, but veers towards the stranger first, eyeing him up and down, just as he eyes her back – hungrily and curiously.

"Greed."

Killian is surprised Emma's voice is so strong, the control and nerve with which she speaks. She'd moved to stand in front of Killian, perhaps under the impression of keeping the two men from fighting one another, but Killian can see her anxiety, her hands fidgeting nervously in the sleeves of her cape. It's not the first time tonight he acts impulsively, but this time he reaches out for her hand, hidden by the block of her body. His fingers graze hers gently, noticing her start a little at the gesture. But he squeezes, tightly, to try and comfort her, to stop her from shaking.

To his relief she squeezes back.

But Ingrid turns slowly, back towards the two of them and Emma breaks their hold in an instant.

"And what about him?"

"Nothing."

"Come now, every man has a crime."

Ingrid stares and steps closer to him as Emma reluctantly steps aside, glancing back at him nervously from over the older woman's shoulder.

Killian spares a look at the other man, suddenly wondering why on earth he still stands there, but he is almost entirely frozen in place, entranced and eyeing over the curves of their bodies. The woman, Ingrid, her skin almost shines with it in the moonlight, sleek and wet and terrible. But all he can see of Emma is the glimpse of a thigh, the shape of the cape as it tapers down over her torso and creates a little pocket of shadow between breast and stomach.

He can't for the life of him understand why the man doesn't move, why the conversation between the two women doesn't make him run. Surely none of this makes sense, surely he's heard of the stories and knows what's coming.

And the only thing he can think of to explain it all is the magic.

But he also has no idea why he is not bewitched the same way.

"Nothing," there is more assurance in Emma's tone this time, and suddenly he's not sure if she's being truthful, or lying to save his skin. "He was in the woods when we got here."

Killian grips the hilt of his sword a little tighter, feeling a little like his control is slipping, the sweat and the moisture in the air getting worse with every second. The humidity builds in the gaps between his fingers and the handle of his sword, causing his grip to slip like his nerves.

(But not his composure, that remains sure and still.)

He tries to keep a neutral expression as he stares this woman down, tries to do the same as the other man, to be as she expects – but his jaw is twitching, and Emma is looking at him so nervously now that it's difficult. Killian almost wishes Emma was not in his line of sight, because it is so difficult to not focus on her in all this.

Greed, Emma had said, that was why the other man was here. Greed, she had said the last time he asked, when the boy had drowned and his reality had shaken. Greed the stories told him time and time again.

The other man looks well-dressed enough for it, it is true, clearly the sort of man more intent on obtaining gold and trinkets than honour or morality. But that wasn't the kind of greed Killian was worried about.

He wonders if Ingrid is seeing greed on his face, seeing the want and lust he feels, but additionally the way his heart wishes for something more. Surely the want and his pursuit for love was just as visible upon his face as desire was on anyone else's.

Surely his need for Emma would be his undoing.

"Send him home, Emma, he'll just think it was all a strange dream."

He almost doesn't hear the words.

They slip through his mind as he waits for the 'but', the 'and', the watery death sentence.

When the confusion finally blinks onto his face, fortunately Ingrid has already turned and disappeared.

And Killian is confused.

There is the grabbing of his hand, the pulling of him back into and through their safe spot, further into dense wood. But Killian's head is still in a daze, trying to make sense of everything that just happened, to understand why, traipsing over logs and sticks trying to grapple with his relief as well as his balance as Emma speeds him through the trees.

Killian's not even sure if the other man is still there, in the clearing, gaping like a wanton fish.

He doesn't fully come to until Emma lets go of his hand, throwing her arms around his shoulders in a desperate hug. His arms go around her instinctively, fingers finding themselves in a mess of her hair and her feathers.

She is a welcome and very real weight in his arms. Two years is a long time to miss Emma the swan-girl.

His heart is still racing, the air is still thick, but every time she breathes, chest moving against his, he feels himself calm. The softness of the hair tingling against his stubble soothes him impossibly. (But none of this is impossible and unbelievable anymore.)

"I can't believe how stupid you are," she mutters into his shoulder.

And Killian actually chuckles.

"At least that's not a punishable offence in your world."

"In your case it should be."

(The scream, the bubbling terrible scream does not make it into the trees. Like last time, the weather and the magic keep it at bay, keep it by the water. But the blue shock of lightning rings silently above them in the sky, and all it does is make Emma grip him more tightly.

And when Emma finally lets his shoulders go, it's only to move her hands into his.)

–

A lot happens the year Killian turns twenty-three.

–

 _Seven for a secret, never to be told…_

There is a problem with living in a world of magic.

And it's not simply the lack of sense, the indistinguishable difference between reason and misunderstanding. However, at the same time, that is exactly the problem. It is easier to be confused, easier to be gullible, it is easier to be cynical.

It is easier to be tricked.

It's a whole twelve moons later and as much as things change, things stay the same. His head is in a daze again, heart pounding out in slow motion again. Emma in his thoughts again.

This time the moon coincides with more than just an empty home, more than just his ship docking nearby, and far more than that one night the swans come out to play.

But it is still perfectly timed with the breaking heart of the boy inside Killian.

He thought coming here would help, that he could hold Emma's hand, bite his lip as he smiled at her, sway into her space and let her tell him how to orbit around himself again, find his centre of gravity again.

He doesn't even make it to the lake before any chance of that goes to hell.

The streets are bitter to him now, too many memories on every street corner, each cobble he trips over as he runs he curses a personal vendetta against. His pain is too new, the emotional gash still wide open and bleeding, and Killian would swear it is that that is making him winded, surely it is that that feels like a stitch in his side as he turns another corner, and not that he's out of shape.

(Couldn't possibly be out of shape, he's only twenty-three.)

He bumps one or two strangers drinking heavily as he passes a stall filled with rosemary decorated pies, not even pausing to apologise. Killian can't stop, can't pause for even a moment. His eyes have been too busy chasing white and black shadows to look away. He might lose them at any moment, and his curiosity is piqued just as it always has been.

With the added bonus of panic.

He knows they come up here, has gathered as much, they must meet the men somehow.

But they are too close to the chaos of the town and it all feels wrong.

All it took was the flicker of a hem disappearing around a corner and he was off, racing through town, not even entirely certain of why.

(Honour, protectiveness, curiosity. The usual causes.)

He can hear a woman yelling, but he catalogues it away as definitely not Emma, and he jolts into a sprint as he rounds a path out of town and not one in the direction of the lake.

Killian isn't sure who he is following, or what for, and as he dashes around another corner, he certainly does not expect what he does find.

The girl is shaking, even in the night he can tell that, her hair falling in dark waves over her black body – but she's not wearing a stitch.

The only stitch she owns is in the hands of the boy.

And maybe he's a boy only a few years younger looking than himself, but there is no naivety in his posture or his face, he knows exactly what he's holding, he knows the value of it.

He knows what the cape of black feathers in his hands mean.

How can he not, the entire town is abuzz with it, singing and dancing and not seeing the stories slip through the street shadows beside them, too drunk on myth and hearsay to see truth. He wonders if they simply assume they are local girls in costume.

And he wastes no time in peering at them, acting promptly with the guise he wears. They both stare at him as he approaches, confusion and hesitation in their stances, Killian's heels scuffing little night clouds on the dirt path.

"What do we have here, then?" The lieutenant's coat around his shoulders feels uncomfortable, like a lie, and still his voice comes out as authoritative as it always did on deck. He's glad for it in a way, his voice is stronger than the shaking in his heart and he blames the starch stiffness in his jacket, blames it for his manner (and a range of other things).

The boy is younger than Killian, but his arrogance is well-aged and mature, taking Killian's tone as a personal slight as he puffs himself up, stands even taller, a cruel sneer sliding onto his face.

"Don't even think about it, pretty boy, I caught her fair and square."

It reminds him of last time, the attitude thrown at him, of the way that the man had eyed Emma, sneered possessively with lust and greed in his eyes. Only this time, the look is different – it is more in control, possessive.

He may still have doubts about his own feelings, his own greed and selfishness, but he knows the difference between protection and possession.

So does the girl beside him, her eyes wide and pleading. She's not sure whether Killian is a threat or not, that much is evident, but he can tell she's waiting for a distraction to steal her feathers back before slipping away.

And apparently Killian is that distraction.

It's then than he wonders how the boy got it at all. He remembers that day, dumbstruck and still with Emma's cloak gripped tightly in his hands, and just how easily she took it back from him. No begging, no pleading eyes, no chasing him through the streets in nothing but her skin.

No, this girl seems to stand a few metres away from him as though unable to touch, anxiously running her hand through her hair. Until something changes in her eyes, and Killian sees it, the moment she thinks of seducing him into doing her will.

The coquettish look is unbecoming, not for any reason other than the fact that she is not Emma, but she sways towards him, a smile on her lips that does not reach her eyes.

"Don't listen to him," her voice is sweet, not the sort of abrasive softness of the older woman he encountered last year, but innocent and far too harmless; it does not carry much threat, no shiver down his spine. "I can't be _caught_ , but I _can_ reward you handsomely for taking back what he has stolen."

Killian feels as though he is at a strange sort of advantage, being so clued into the game, far ahead of the other players. He feels like he knows what to expect, knows her moves certainly, and expects the other man to act as stupidly as all men in lust do.

And it is with a bitter gripe that he still falls for it.

It's not that he'd been that preoccupied with the girl, not really. She is beautiful and graceful though he is not drawn, but he was watching cautiously the way she had been slinking towards him, too closely, and that is his downfall.

It only takes one moment.

And Killian curses under his breath as a knife swiftly and silently appears under his jaw.

"Is this what they're training you in the military these days? I don't much fancy your chances in battle." The words are spat in his ear, foul and distasteful and there's something in his heart, a shard of something that hardens and cracks at his words.

He tries to ignore it.

"This isn't a wise move for you, mate," Killian is half-mocking, half-cruel in his delivery.

"I'll be the judge of that, just go back where you came from, go get drunk with the rest of this stinking village, none of this involves you. Find your own swan."

Something else in him hardens at the words – the irony, the truth and the inaccuracy of his words. This night, it perfectly coincides this year with everything, and he is suddenly struck with the thought that tomorrow night he does not know what he will find, or where he will find himself. He has found Emma, but he can only find her one night of the year, and it is cruel, and it makes him angry (for both their sakes).

He would find her and stay, if he could.

And the jacket around his shoulders is a lie.

The girl has abandoned her attempt at charming either of them, eyeing her feathers, forlorn, seemingly unaware of the fact that she is standing on the outskirts of town utterly naked.

It makes no sense. Her inability to act in contrast to Emma's agency, the frantic chasing of the boy to the lust-drunk stumbling of the other two men he'd seen, and the fact that Killian seems to be somewhere between the two, head over heels, but still with lucid thought over magic.

He must be missing something.

Something Emma is keeping close to her chest, another secret, another myth she still doesn't want him to know. And he's not mad at her, not really, but he is so in the dark, tricked by magic, so constantly at a loss for an explanation – about her, about his mother, his father.

About Liam.

The sounds of running feet, trample the ground behind them, dull little bare-foot thuds against the ground, heavy breathing following their padding. And once more the other two turn to see who has interrupted them in their struggle for power.

Only, Killian doesn't follow where they look.

This time he is not the distraction. And Killian has one of his own.

His mind is too clouded, dazed in the things that continue to elude him, the power over his own life he struggles to hold, like the way the feathers of Emma's cloak slip through his fingers when he tries to hold on too tightly. Killian feels his jaw twitching as the frustration and the mourning bubble inside him, each bubble rising up his throat and bursting against the roof of his mouth, letting loose a range of feelings that curse and overwhelm him. They were never very well concealed emotions, to be honest. And the approaching feet do not distract him from the feeling.

It tastes sour on his tongue, the way the boy insults him, the shaking of the girl, naked and terrified in front of him, the cruel way logic seems to be just beyond his reach. The way that Killian loses everything.

And so, instead, he uses the opportunity to snap and bend the wrist at his throat, and it's audible, the crack, the boy yelping loudly and angrily, far too focused on the pain to notice as Killian grabs the knife before it clatters to the dirt beneath them.

And far too focused on the pain to notice as Killian plunges the knife into the boy's chest.

Everyone stops moving.

All pairs of feet are halted, no night birds – swan or owl – making any noise at all.

It's probably a bad auspice.

And the silence is deafening, the way there is nothing to distract from what he's just done, the knife still in his hand. His heart has been racing all night, side-by-side with his feelings, stringing pain and adrenalin into every beat. And it's the only thing he can hear.

Well, almost everything.

Everything except the boy. He gurgles, a look of shock and fear etched onto every line of his face, twitching and surprised as the blood leaks and seeps through his lungs.

Killian regrets it almost instantly.

There is too much horror in the boy's eyes, too much silence in the night around him, too much coughing and hacking, bubbling black in the dark.

Too much blood dripping down Killian's hand.

And the eyes stare at him – death and shadow and shock – and it reminds him of Liam.

He lets go, and as the boy sinks to the ground he is struck with the uncomfortable realisation. He wasn't thinking. Or more accurately he was thinking too much, anger and rage and sadness clouding him so that the twist of the knife had felt like going through the motions.

A familiar move, an unfamiliar target.

He has killed him in cold blood.

(Cold blood, hot head, heavy heart.)

Killian is still staring at the scene on the ground before him, watching the boy heave, the girl take back her feathers, letting the blood drip down his forearm, staining his shirt. It trickles thickly, staining the white of his skin far too quickly for how he feels, how the world feels stilled, slow and in shock. He holds his hands out in front of him, staring at them with a morbid acceptance, when two hands enclose around his.

He should have known it would be her.

"Killian, come on, we need to go."

Emma's hands are small around his, cold and soft, prying the knife from his grip before throwing it to the ground, coating her own hands in blood. It leaves little finger prints on his skin, tiny ripples and smears of her fingers across his skin and he can't help but bore a hole into the marks with his eyes.

And when he does look up from his hands at last, it is to see concern and panic on her face.

(Concern where he feels there should be judgement.)

She's not alone. There is another white swan with her, young and thin and consoling the frazzled black one. They are caught in their own scare, trying to calm their nerves, but not too busy to eye Emma and Killian suspiciously.

But he's not wholly paying attention to them, he's watching the way the blood stains her hands, and how she doesn't care, too busy waiting for him to respond to her whispers that they need to get going.

Her hands – just like last time – hold his and pull him through the woods, taking a long detour back to the lake, avoiding the town altogether. And just like last time he is in a daze.

However, it is different. He feels guilt, and a darkness linger over him, and the daze is not his consciousness but his heart. He feels everything so clearly, a painful comprehension of where they are, of each tree trunk, each fallen leaf.

The daze is in his heart. It feels coated and thick, like the blood had felt trickling down his arms, but he can't quite put his finger on how he feels. He cannot tell if he feels nothing or too much, numb or overwhelmed, restless or immovable.

Killian always feared his emotions would be his undoing. They made him hurt, they made him _want_.

But wanting and greed was not his sin. The swans were never going to come for him for that. Greed was never going to drag him beneath the black lake, never going to drag him down.

Murder, on the other hand…


	3. viii, ix, x

_A/N: This fic was a story I wrote as a labour of love for myself, and I have absurdly tight hugs for anyone who liked or has sent me nice things about it because it's kinda close to my heart and now so are you. I'm truly sorry about the giant gaps between chapters, I suffered some serious author's anxiety. But mostly I just want to say thank you to everyone who read it and liked it._

 _._

 _Bird of Prey (3/3)_

 _._

 _Eight for a wish_

 _Nine for a kiss_

 _Ten for a bird, you must not miss._

.

The dark water keeps many secrets.

It keeps the secrets of magic, secrets of the night, secrets of swans. He's sure it keeps other less grim mysteries - the morning ritual of kingfishers, the parting words of autumn leaves, the rippled steps to a dragonfly's dance. But the water is too murky, too dubious. It keeps the big secrets in with the little.

And now it keeps his.

It keeps the blood that mars his hands, washes it in the dark so that no one else can see it.

The night is too dark to see his face shining back at him in its reflection, but there's blood caked on his skin, he can feel it drying and cracking in the breeze, smeared by the touches of his face he hadn't even been aware he'd been doing.

Killian watches, numbed in a way and alert in every other, as the black lake washes away the blood that had wept down his arm with rippled water and aggravated fingernails. He cups the water in his hands too, washing his face, the cool water a chill relief, cleaning off the dried remnants of someone else's life.

(Numbed to his movements, alert to his feelings.)

Eventually his skin becomes clean. Though he can't say the same for his shirt.

Or other parts of him.

(His heart, he's sure, is stained.)

Killian remembers the first time that he killed a man. He remembers it so clearly he can feel in now in the moonlight, even though the day itself had been so different. It had been hot, sweltering, sweat dripping from every part of him. His hair had been lank with sea salt and wind, watching as with a heavy sadness the man thumped to the floor beneath him, eyes shocked wide, warm blood mixing with sea-spray and gunpowder on the deck of the ship.

He could not stop to mourn, to regret, as the clash of swords around him demanded his attention.

He hated it. That sinking feeling as though he had instead jumped blindly into the ocean from a great height, when really all he'd done was gut the stranger in front of him.

But he told himself it was battle, that these men were his enemies; if it was not their blood it would be his, his brother's, his friends'. It was what he'd been trained for. This time around, it should have been the same – the feeling, the kill – but it wasn't. The guilt he usually felt was easier to dismiss in the guise of honour and duty, guilt polished away in much the same way the blood was polished from his sword on the sleeve of his coat.

This was different.

Killian had never killed a man in cold blood before.

Was it even in cold blood? The phrase - the meaning - felt at conflict with how he himself felt. His blood seared hot, he could feel the way his body was scorched by it, a raging heat, slick and sick and thick to his stomach. But there was certainly a disconnect from his guilt. It felt fractured, like the guilt was there, but everything else was too.

It was callous, maybe, but it wasn't cold. It was boiling anger, it was the blindness of his own emotions. A crime of passion, perhaps.

Killian tried to tell himself he was helping, that it was in defence of the swan-girl – that it was for Emma, for her kind, her friends.

But deep down he knew that wasn't right.

Liam would have been disappointed.

Emma stands somewhere behind him with the two other swans, the black one and the white one. They linger. Their muttering is hushed, but not hushed enough that he can't hear them, the trickle of water from his face back onto the lake is not loud enough.

( _"How well do you know him? We just watched him kill a man, Emma, I won't leave you alone with him."_

 _"It's not like we weren't about to do the same thing."_

 _"It's not the same, and you know it."_

 _"Please, Elsa, just - you and Ursula go. I'll be fine."_

 _"How can you be sure?"_ )

It twists Killian in his stomach – the idea that Emma still trusts him. And it shocks him, the unyielding way she has come to believe him, when she used to be so on edge. She had been more wary glances than open gestures.

And he's not sure how it changed, or when it did.

It's not like they see each other often, only a handful of hours once a year. But somewhere in the last eight years her trust must have overshadowed her distrust.

"Why did you kill him?"

But not her need to know.

Emma sits beside him, her knees up to her chest, his crime long-washed from her own hands. The irony of her asking him instead of the other way around ( _"Why did you drown him?"_ ) rings in his thoughts, but he doesn't know quite what to tell her, what exactly is the answer to the why.

So, he sighs and leaves her question hanging in the air.

"How was he able to steal her feathered cloak?"

Her answering sigh is as deep as his own.

"If you're tired of my questions, Emma, perhaps you'd be better off answering them."

As much as his voice is bitter, it is tired, and her frustration is a quiet one, hardening itself in her gaze because she's perfectly aware that he's ignored her own question. When she makes no move to say anything he turns from her again, running a wet hand through his hair, sweeping straggling strands from his eyes, the uncomfortable bite now in the night air, chilling his lungs.

The lake is silent.

"Do you remember that year you took me into town?" It's the last thing he thought she'd bring up. Her face is gentle, but serious, and he can feel the weight of every word she's holding on her tongue. "You asked me to follow you into- well, the lion's den, the belly of the beast, whatever you want to call it. I should probably never have gone, it was stupid."

"You kissed me that night," Killian says it as though to prove her cynicism wrong, knowing that really that night had been a great deal of fun for both of them, the way the danced and wandered through the markets, the way she'd kissed him beside the wall of the bakery. But she ignores his input.

"You asked me if I trusted you."

Emma stops.

There's a final sort of look on her face, as though with that one statement it's supposed to explain everything. It doesn't. In turn Killian scrunches his own face back at her.

"What the devil does that mean?"

"We're not supposed to trust one another, Killian. I'm supposed bat my eyelashes at you, to drown you, and you're supposed to swindle and cheat and hurt like men do. My cloak - you were never _supposed_ to give it back."

"So why did I?"

"You tell me," a crackle to her words.

She may believe and trust him more than she used to, but there is still so much doubt and hesitation in her. She is just as confused by the world, by the thing between them, and it comforts him a little to know that Emma, scared though she may be, is still there every year when he shows up.

She is still there greeting him with gentle fingers and soft lips, even when she also greets him with a hardened attitude and biting words.

Still looks at him with something soft and understanding.

"No, there's something you're still not saying."

Her hand searches for his. Killian likes that Emma does this, the simple intimate thing. And her skin is cool, a balm against his scorching own as the tops of her fingers run around his wrist, her touch leaving the same kind of refreshing tingle the lake water did. And then as she curls her fingers with his, mirroring the thing she's trying to say; their fingers twine evenly.

(And it helps, the concentrating on her, the watching her emotions instead of his own. It helps. Her hand in his, that helps too.

His pulse quickens with something that's not anger.)

The pinch in her brow is all-telling, but Killian wishes he was all-knowing. He can see that she's bracing herself, eyelashes flickering in the shine of the moon, he just wishes he knew why.

There is something she wants to say, trapped like a yawn at the back of her throat.

"This _thing_ , what we do, it doesn't always work the same way every time. Magic is funny like that, it's fickle and temperamental, and it is always, _always,_ about balance. One life for another, a wish in exchange for a wish. Tonight should never have happened, even though it happens often enough that your people sing about it. She was too gullible. Every time we go out and we – well, your world call it hunt - it always depends on the intentions and usually the crimes of the men," Emma's edge slinks into her voice, that glimpse of the danger he knows exists within her. And the sharpness strangely matches the words she finishes with. "You gave it back."

"I was fifteen," Killian says it sardonically, sceptical that his dumbfoundedness at the time really meant anything near as significant as she's suggesting.

"You _gave_ it back."

"Let me get this straight," his thumb gently traces her own, his pinky finger twitching a little at the same time. "You're saying that you know why you trust me, but not why I trusted you in the first place?"

Her nod is so slight if he wasn't watching her so intently he'd have missed the small agreement.

"Why did you give it back?"

He takes a while to respond, and it's only partly because he knows that his answer won't soothe her query. There was no greater purpose to giving back her feathers that night, no agenda. The cloak had slipped through with a weak clench of his fingers and he was so agog, so bewildered he had assumed it was all her doing all aloong.

She had always been literally stunning.

But knowing that she hadn't done anything, that it was all him? Realisation dawns on him.

Additionally, Killian takes a while to respond because he tries to remember that moment. The way she had smiled, the way she had crept towards him with every confidence in the world. At the time he had assumed she knew what she was doing, that he was the naïve boy and she the all-knowing swan; that the certainty he would give it back was about the fallacies in the myth, that the expression on her face was knowledge.

He realises now, that she was simply hiding behind her magical walls, that the extension of her hand towards him was no different to the girl tonight and the way she had tried to seduce her feathers back.

Killian remembers with perfect clarity why he did it.

"Because you asked."

There's a dryness to the way she repeats his earlier words – _what the devil does that mean?_ – an intentional imitation of his confusion, right down to mirroring his intonation. Killian smiles at her, a little lift of the lips to acknowledge the tease, but his blood has stopped racing, and his head is much clearer, and he hasn't thought of Liam in minutes.

And so he's quite serious when he tells her -

"I could never deny anything you asked of me, Emma."

.

It's something that Emma says that he remembers – a life for a life.

Only Killian takes it one step further – a life for a life, a brother for a brother, a boat for a boat, his uniform for a leather coat. A kingdom for his world. It is not the same sort of justice as Emma's, it's revenge plain and simple, the reparation for what was taken, committing crimes to avenge the crimes done to him.

(And the guilt of that first kill, the boy with the black feathers in his hands, he buries that under the bodies of others so that he can't see him.

Not that it helps.)

He hoists the crimson flag high on the mast of his brother's ship, he replaces his title with Captain. He swears fealty against the king he had originally sworn it to.

He lets anger and sadness and darkness fill the void his brother left.

Emma would be disappointed.

But she flies with the dawn just like she is forced to do every year. He attempts to fill that void too, fill the agony that sits heavily in his throat and his heart at the memory of her. It feels like homesickness, that unpleasant taste in the back of his mouth, the yearning in his bones.

He misses her. He misses Liam.

Neither are a new feeling.

In a way the year goes quickly, the way he plots and schemes and raids each port along the coastline wills away the time, as does the way he lets rum ease his evenings, and lets gold fill his coffers.

The men that stick by him drift into debauchery with just as much weakness as he does, easily caught in the power they mistakenly think it gives them, the lure of the women and men that simper about them. Killian doesn't try to fill _that_ void. He flirts with women, beams and smiles at them into doing what he wants, into letting them drink more ale than they've paid for, into leaving backdoors open and lord's houses unguarded in the middle of the night.

It holds his reputation together when he himself cannot help but fall apart.

.

 _Eight for a wish…_

It's something else Emma says – a wish for a wish.

That's what he goes with in mind the next year, when the night is warm and restless.

He's sure the words mean nothing, some sort of idiom he's unfamiliar with, but his heart wishes for so many things that the words pop back into his head one day, along with the memory of the touch of her hand in his. He wishes he was stronger, he wishes he weren't so constantly at a loss.

(The sound of Liam's pitchy singing, he wishes for that, too.)

He does not run to the lake this year, does not rush there eagerly. They had settled into the port nearby moons ago, Killian not willing to risk missing her and now able to now ensure that he doesn't. (Now that he answers to no one.)

So, really, he _is_ eager to see her – desperately, weary with it – but it's not the same sort of eagerness that used to take him there on running feet. In fact, he's cautious, a little pit of dread unsettled in his stomach, clattering around with each footfall and every lunge he makes over shadowed sticks.

Killian is nervous.

And with good reason. He is not the boy who used to come, the young man whose only crimes were that he went to the lake at all, that he felt things for a swan when he shouldn't, that he pinched this and that when he was down on his luck. This year? This year the new clothes aren't the only heavy things he wears upon his shoulders.

She is already there, pacing restlessly in the cool that nips, fidgeting with the edges of her cloak. His heart falters in his chest – as it does every year at the sight of her. There are no clouds in the sky and the moon refracts over the still lake water until it hits her, causing a simple glow, a subtle shine of the moon on her feathers and her features.

She looks every bit the magical creature she is.

But she's antsy, Killian feels it in the way she holds herself. She is just as nervous as he is.

(And there can only really be one reason for it.)

His boots crinkle the ground beneath him, dry as though in need of rain, and she turns in a flurry, her pale form beneath peering out innocently. Emma moves with every intention of moving towards him.

But she stops at the sight of him.

Killian looks utterly different, of that he's well aware. The big leather duster, the black lined around his eyes, and almost every inch of him swathed in leather dark, and strong and dangerous. He is a pirate now, insignia and naval uniform lying in an undisclosed location, forgotten on the ocean floor.

Emma eyes each difference with a hard, subjective eye - the clothing, the jewellery, the swagger.

But unlike the women in the taverns that coyly drift towards him with heavily lidded eyes, and very un-lidded intentions, her eyes are wide open, chest heaving with whatever turmoil sits within it.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Emma's voice is short and sharp, like words upon a knife edge, unsure whether to teeter one way or the other – towards anger or tears. She certainly sounds irritable, all the more irritated that she cannot yell or their voices will carry across the water.

Killian raises his arms a little and sways from side-to-side, purposefully twirling the bottom of his coat as he does.

"I thought it was time for some new threads. Not a fan? I think I'm still rather debonair, myself."

"I asked what the hell are you doing, not what are you wearing."

Emma crosses her arms, paying zero attention as to what it does to her chest beneath her cloak, but Killian is too busy trying to make sense of her mood to focus on it.

He cocks his head a little, stepping closer to her, but she doesn't move as he expects her to, she keeps still, and keeps her eyes intent on his own. There is something in her countenance he cannot place, cannot name it, its meaning peers out from where it is hidden in the same manner her clothelessness does.

"Not that you're really an expert on clothing, are you, love?"

"So what, you throw on some leather and some eyeliner and suddenly you're the trendy king of thieves? Answer the question, Killian, what the hell is going on?"

When Killian is close enough to reach her, he is too caught by the red rim of her eyes. She looks uncertain as to whether she should be pleading with him or yelling at him. He's never seen her look so vulnerable, and it's disconcerting. Her harsh expression is nothing compared to the glistening fear in her eyes.

She must know something, but he'll try his damnedest to get her to say it rather than make a guess of it.

"Well, currently, you see there's this lass. Fair hair, fair skin, infuriatingly vague, you might know her."

" _I'm_ vague? That's rich coming from you. Don't you remember last year? You know, when you killed someone and didn't think it was necessary to say why?"

Killian feels his gut sink. It's not that he thought she'd let it go, it was the reason he'd come on leaden feet after all. The reason he'd dreaded and yearned to see her again in equal measure.

"It matters not."

"Like hell it doesn't. And I didn't want to pry, I was happy to let you tell me in your own time, but - you could have told me about your brother, you know, I would have understood."

Killian stills.

And Emma stills with him, guilt and nerves written all over her face. She cannot stay fixed, however, and begins to pace, making a little frustrated noise with her when she goes – she is all unease and bad news.

But Killian still cannot move.

"I never told you about Liam."

She's twisting and turning on the pebbles, still wobbling that line between anger and something sadder, something more distraught.

"You didn't have to," and she's still not looking at him properly, running a hand through her hair. "We know, Killian, _we_ know about every stupid thing you stole, every ship you attacked, about everyone you or your men killed, every time you lied, and cheated, and..."

Her meaning sinks with his gut, heavily.

She doesn't pick up where her words left off, huffing in frustration instead, her mind whirring too much for her tongue to catch up.

Killian is only slightly shocked. He'd pondered it for weeks, worried and wondered whether any of his crimes fell under greed, or avarice, whether he'd gorged himself too much on his melancholy. Wondered if the swans took men for any other sins. Was revenge greed? It was certainly self-serving, thinking little of anyone but himself.

(Well, himself, Liam and Emma.)

So hearing the words spoken hurriedly from her tongue feel like they are only confirming what he already deep down knew.

He has fallen too far.

He has been too weak.

The swans are coming for him.

His hand catches her arm as she paces past him again, calling her name softly, desperate to soothe her tension, desperate to understand the level of her panic. Should he be scared?

Should he never have come to the lake?

Emma turns to him with a huff, reluctant to meet his gaze, too focused on her own restlessness, further still ignoring the way he repeats her name in an effort to get her focus. She doesn't want to, she looks like she wants to yell at him, like she wants to grab him by his leather lapels and shake some sense into him.

She wants to, but she doesn't.

Unexpectedly, she is gentle.

One of Emma's hands moves to tap the pendants of his new necklace, the skull and cross bones, the little sword. Killian can almost feel how unsettled she is, buzzing this close to him, the fingers hesitantly at her wrist, but her touches are almost too sad, too _something_.

They are soft and sharp at the same time.

Her hand drifts from pendant to jacket, palm smoothing over the surface until it meets the skin of his neck.

"Trying to seduce an answer out of me, Emma?"

He tries to joke that something out of her that he cannot place, the reason for the red around her eyes, tries where pleading failed - but it doesn't work either.

"You know that's not what I'm doing."

"I'd rather it was."

The backs of his fingers find her cheek before moving to twine in with the hair at the back of her neck. It causes her to sigh, but the squint in her brow is still prominent. Gentle coaxing is not helping her tension, no matter how softly his thumb strokes her jawline.

"I can't lose you," it's almost factual the way she says it, her eyes making contact with his, her lips a firm, stern line.

The words mean too much.

She has a habit of doing this, of taking small words and making them bigger. Of showing little parts of herself that mean everything. And as the words sink in her eyes remain locked on his, determined to tell him what that _something_ was.

The words are simple.

And yet his heart swells in his chest, feels too big, too _something._ He knows she likes him, Emma kisses, and touches and _trusts_ him too much for him to believe otherwise. But this, this rips at him in a way he did not expect.

Like the nights they meet mean as much to her as they do to him.

Killian kisses her.

He's not sure how he means to kiss her - softly, gently, open-mouthed or with biting frustration. He forgets the moment his lips touch hers and all he does is simply hold her to him for a moment. It's Emma that changes it, her breath stuttering sharply against his lips, her hands winding under the sides of his coat. She pulls at him, long-drawn and biting, soft slides of her lips that hook.

Her kiss is as mixed as her emotions – gentle and sharp.

He forgets that she is naked against him, forgets that his life is in danger, and focuses solely on the fact that his heart is pounding in his chest and that her tongue is teasing on the edge of his.

Despite the slight breeze blowing, there is little sound to the rustle of the leaves, and the air is filled with only the sounds of their lips, their breathing, their feet on the pebbled ground, the hum in her throat when his fingers knot in her hair. It is chilly, but he half expects to overheat with his layers and the flush of her neck in his palm.

And the words of hers that flood through him.

Killian pulls away first, and he nearly laughs when she chases after him, her nose nudging his.

"How much danger am I in?"

But Emma says nothing, not daring to. That in itself says everything.

"Would you rather I stayed away?"

"You know I don't want that. But, you need to stop, Killian. I can help to keep you safe from the others to a certain extent, but you need to help yourself. "

It seems impossible, the fight in his heart. He's not scared for himself, not really, not any more. All he fears is the truth, that he has disappointed Emma, that he has disappointed Liam. He seems at a loss because there are still plans in his head, schemes against lords and dignitaries that are still unpunished for their involvement in Liam's campaign. He cannot leave his plight for his brother - maybe it is pride, maybe it is loyalty. Whatever it is, it sticks in his chest where grief sits and seems just as immovable.

And yet…

Emma's hands sit clenched upon his coat, holding on resolutely. He doesn't want Emma to think her trust in him is misplaced, doesn't want her to grow distrustful simply because he is weak. Doesn't want her to doubt what kind of man he really is.

She sees the conflict on his face.

"Look, I know _why_ you're doing this, and I'm not saying I wouldn't do the same thing for my family. But, I just _wish_ you wouldn't."

Her wish is just as hard to grant as his own.

"And I wish you didn't have to leave."

.

Killian made a promise that morning, as the sun still hesitated beneath the horizon. The sky still grey and dark, and Emma no less unsettled when she hugs him goodbye.

( _"Do me a favour and at least try and stay out of trouble?" "I give you my word."_ )

And maybe he never should have.

When he crosses the gangplank of his ship, the business of the harbour starting up around them, when Smee greets him with news of a delivery of weaponry for His Majesty's army, he finds it's very hard to say no, to turn a blind eye.

It is the first thing he does – releases the anchor, sets sail out of the quay - they leave first thing, they attack and they loot the ship that holds swords, muskets and gunpowder and His Majesty's property.

He cannot seem to help himself.

But he does try. Tries to make excuses to his crew about a fictional mission – one that is purely need to know basis only – and tries to keep them out of trouble. More time in taverns than lord's houses, more time out at sea than picking fights in port.

And it works. A little bit.

For a little while.

.

 _Nine for a kiss…_

He goes for a kiss.

Specifically _that_ kiss.

Truth be told every kiss is another reason to return to the lake, every touch of her hands, every smile that digs dimples into her cheeks. More than that it is her strength and her goodness in spite of the stories that draws him back, and that unfaltering bite of hers, her strength of will. It makes him want to be more, makes him want to prove himself.

But that kiss?

Like the first kiss, and like every other kiss afterwards, it showed him how much she cares. Perhaps there was no real difference between one or the other, aside from the particulars (his hands in her hair, hers in his, her tongue taunting his, the tilt of their heads). Perhaps it would be truer to say that he goes for every kiss, for every moment.

But it's that one, the one that showed him the extent of her affections that he struggles with. He finds it so hard to curb his behaviour. Without her, back on his ship with the others, he feels her absence and that hollow thing inside of him begs to be filled.

It should be the other way around. The way he feels about her should be the thing that draws him out of his darkness, but her absence only makes him wallow.

He has grown very used to wallowing with a sharp grin upon his face.

The feel of her lips on his does not fade with the moon, but his strength does. He is two steps forward, three steps back; determination and human folly; good intentions and coarse mistakes. He cannot seem to stop himself, not when the loss of Liam is so poignant day after day.

Not when the war rages on and Killian cannot tell which side deserves to win.

(Literally and metaphorically.)

He holds on to that kiss, the one she returned knowing full well his crimes and his sins.

Knowing who he is and what he's done; knowing what kind of man he is.

On the full moon that is hers, Killian takes his time. He's wary that any of the women he passes through town might be there for him, that each coy smile – and there are always those – might be more swan than woman. Emma never said if they knew about _them_ , just about him, and yet every whisper of blonde hair he catches out of the corner of his eye he thinks might be someone trying to lure him in.

He's not far into the woods, far closer to town than lake, when that glimpse of blonde he'd been wary of runs straight up to him out of nowhere.

"No, not here, not this year."

The weather is bad.

Reminiscent of the first time he'd seen the drowning – the oncoming rain rumbling in the clouds, the whipping wind. The violence of it, the tumultuousness must match something in her because she looks distressed and on edge. More than that she looks determined. But he knows now when to push and when to pull, and tonight he does as she asks, he takes her away from the lake, away from whatever it is the weather is about.

(He can guess what it's about, he is learning.)

It's a slow trudge through the trees, the wind determined to blow them about and he's careful to lead her on softer ground, mindful of the bareness of her feet, but they make it eventually. They sneak through the shadows and through the back door. There's no one around to even glimpse them.

Regardless, Emma's grip is tight in his.

The rain doesn't break until they are safely inside, but it comes down all at once in white sheets, the water crashing loudly in relief.

Killian knows it lies empty.

He passes by it sometimes, depending on the war in his heart. The house sits more in the woods than it does in the town, but the noise from the village echoes up hill. The laughter and merriment of the festival, regardless of the weather, is almost as clear here as it was ten years ago, the rain dulling it only a little.

They have rituals to carry out, foolish fables to spread in children's ears – the rain means nothing.

"What is this place?"

The roof has fallen in in more than one place, vines and leaves and branches sneaking in and binding themselves to the walls of his past, making it feel as though they've barely stepped from the outside in. Even the rain trickles through from the outdoors, following branches and gaping holes to well in puddles on the ground.

"It belonged to my parents."

"This was your home?"

"Aye. It was."

Killian is determined not to think of it that way – _home_ – if he does the memory of his family will appear, Liam in a bed in the corner, his mother humming by the stove. It will show him the gaps in his life and the things he cannot have.

(He doesn't need them here to remind him of that, he has Emma for that.)

The rain becomes heavier, louder and crashing through the timber roof, showering in more steadily through the holey ceiling. Emma watches him eyeing the place, reading (as she always does) the things he will not say.

"It's not much, but no one will look for us here."

"Good."

Killian doesn't press her straight away for the reason they have fled, why they are here. It was unsafe last year, and yet they stayed by the water's edge, but Emma always has her reasons, so he bides his time. She's careful around the house, moving about the small place, her feathers sweeping on the dry patches of dirt ground, the souls of her feet clean and white.

There is something wrong, a sadness settled heavily on her features that translates into her walk.

He knows that some of it must be related to him, to the way they're currently avoiding the lake. But she's looking around the house with a faraway eye, and Killian thinks her own family must be on her mind.

She had always been slow to reveal, but she did tell him of her own family in the end, in the safe shadows of night. Of how she has no parents, just a brother of her own, younger, more foolish, naïve. Emma always speaks of him as Liam always would of Killian – a strange mixture of condescension and affection. It must be a sibling thing. But Emma's brother Neal is much younger than she is, and ten years is a large enough gap for her to feel less like a sister and more like a parent.

Killian knows she's looking at the reminder of his parents and thinking of her own.

(Emma never tells him what the male swans do while the women are out with the full moon.)

And while she thinks of them, Killian longs to know of the other thing that's plaguing her.

"What is it, what's wrong?"

There's an almost pitying look in her eye, for the way that his ignorance continues to plague him. Emma opens her mouth to speak and reply but changes her mind about the words on the tip of her tongue, changing them to something else.

"Do you remember last year?"

Killian's stomach sinks (a reoccurring thing).

"They're coming for me aren't they?"

"Something like that. They want me to do it."

Emma crosses from the far side of the room, treading through a shallow puddle and making footprints on the ground. There is no hesitation in the way she reaches for him, her fingers carefully touching the leather of his lapels. It is as though she is tracing what they've weathered into her mind, comparing them to the lieutenant's coat, comparing them to the young boy's simple woollen jacket.

"Apparently, I have leverage," Emma raises a weary eyebrow at him. "They have _no_ idea what they're asking me to do."

Killian takes her hand in his, running his calloused thumb against her hands which are anything but. Here in the house she seems less angry, less panicked, and yet still with that determined eye about her.

All Killian can feel is guilt.

"And which of my many crimes do you think I should pay for? Greed, murder, theft, lust.."

His other fingers move gently through her hair, his own fingertips grazing her scalp, but Emma is not affected by the listing of his sins, nor by the way he lingers on the word lust. Emma only smiles sadly back up at him, voice as determined as her look.

"I think you are more than your mistakes."

"Are they still mistakes if you do them willingly?"

"Your heart does not do them willingly, Killian."

"How can you be so sure?"

And maybe his voice breaks a little because he needs to hear what she has to say. Here in the empty house that is just as abandoned as he is, he feels small. Although he may have walked past it on occasion, he'd never actually stepped inside, never dared to see his childhood through such different eyes. And there is some bitter sort of symmetry to bringing her here ten years after he lay in a bed under the window, staring at the moon and thinking about swans.

The Killian that was a young boy would be shocked at where he ended up, head over heels with the object of the myth, guilt laying heavily in his heart, blood on his hands.

He asks because he isn't sure himself, and she's always seems to know more than him. More about myths, more about mysteries, about life and human nature. Somehow he trusts that Emma will know whether he has lost himself or not.

The hand of hers that is not in his slips from his clothes to his chest, to his bare skin, slips until her hand rests between his shirt and his heart.

"Because of this," she punctuates the word by putting pressure where her hand lies. "And because of this-" she punctuates again with a small kiss to his lips. "Also, your guilt is written all over your face. I know who you are by now, you know. I know what kind of man you are."

It's like music to his ears. And, yet she's right, he has spent years and years living with his emotions, the ones that are as constant and as changeable as the tides. Years of weakness and struggle and surviving-

"I'm sorry, Emma, I…"

"I know."

He's out of words.

Although, that's not entirely true. There are many things Killian still has left to say to Emma. More apologies, more explanations, more questions.

(Words of a happier nature, but ones that still hurt him somehow.)

He presses the words to her lips with his own instead, mostly afraid that the words themselves are too much. That how he feels is too much.

It was meant to be a thanks, his gratitude, his way of showing that he does not know how to say how much her good opinion means to him. It was meant to be her way of telling him that she understands, that she knows he's trying (that she likes him anyway).

It escalates.

That's the only way to explain it. The way that a simple kiss, not unlike the ones they've shared before, seems to gain momentum; hands caught in hair, lips insisting, heavy breathing. It becomes more. It becomes about the something they will not speak of, of the storm outside; the frustration surrounding their fates.

Emma's lips against his own are soft and content, long drawn sort of kisses that take their time, that burn a trail of goosebumps down his back; make him shiver. Even as she takes his hands in hers, her nails scraping delicately over his palms he feels the unvoiced desperation in the gentle movement.

And this he can do, this – _them_ – caught up in one another, no distractions as to where the sun is under the earth, or where either of them will go in the morning. Emma thinks of it, Killian supposes, feeling it in the way she stumbles in her kiss, breath hitching against his lips.

But then it is Killian's turn for his breath to hitch.

Emma drags his hand under the feathers of her cloak, the flat of his palm making contact with the cool, bare skin at the side of her ribcage.

Bracing himself with his forehead on hers Killian stops kissing her, but he says nothing (he has no more words; he has too many). His fingers dance a little against her skin restless in their sudden nervousness. The skin is soft under his touch as his hands skim, moving down her waist to the round of her hip and back up again – until his thumb hits the under side of her breast and he stops again.

She shivers too.

Emma tries to reclaim his lips, and he lets her briefly, a gentle bite, a toothless nip, but he has a hard time focusing on movement. His mind is pre-occupied with thoughts of greed, of that burning need for her – every square inch of her – that he's spent years wary of.

Of the stories that warn him of a lustful folly.

But lust is only lust in the absence of love.

This is a different kind of want altogether.

He is like an addict tempted, a man with his temptation in front of him, touching him; Temptation's fingers slipping under the shoulders of his coat, Temptation's nose nudging his in invitation.

"What are you so worried about?" Temptation whispers, and it's not really her way of asking – she knows, and shows it in the coaxing of his hands and the thumb she traces along his bottom lip.

Emma says it to show him he has nothing he should be worried about.

She is determined.

And of all the things he's done in the past few years - the blood that stains the thoughts in his mind, the numerous dark deeds he's done - it suddenly occurs to him that Emma could never be one of those things. She has always been a bright spark in his life, a very blinding light, white and bright, and despite the horrors, the myths, the warnings – she is not a mistake to make.

It crumbles – the fight, the struggle – and he kisses her back without any of that weight, leaving the crackle of thunder and rain outside to drown it out.

His hands move around her back, pulling her closer to him and crashing his lips back to hers with tongue and teeth and words in mouth. The kiss could hardly be called languid, and yet, in comparison to the way his heart skips out of control, anything could be slower paced.

And his hands roam to places only his thoughts have been – down, down her back and over her curves, up, up over the dip of her waist to the blades on her back. The house is so dark, and like a blind man he uses his hands to read and find.

Her own hands seem torn between cradling his face and pulling off his clothes, wavering between fiddling with the buttons he's wearing and simply kissing him. But the waistcoat must go, the sword has to be unbuckled from his side, shirt persuaded over his head.

Emma does it all with her own sort of urgency, as though desperate to see his skin for once.

Killian does exactly what the stories tell him not to.

( _"Are you sure no one will find us here?" "Why, planning on doing something interesting?" "This is a one man show."_ )

She stumbles back a bit, a quiet and almost shy smile on her face when she unties her cape and glances over her shoulder to watch the movement of her feathers. They spread out on the ground with suspicious precision ( _magic_ ), a blanket over cool dirt.

The skin he has seen countless times is still as snaring as ever and he can't help but look – now he has permission – and when she stumbles back in to kiss him he hears a muttered ' _humans_ ' pressed against his bewildered lips and against the sound of the rain.

He has never felt urgency move so slowly.

They are so desperate to devour, and so hesitant to actually get there, each movement slow and consumed.

The ground is hard and uneven beneath his forearms, and there's water dripping through the ceiling around them, but it's either unimportant or adds to the atmosphere - he can't decide. He's not really listening, he's too busy tasting the trill of her pulse where it beats on her neck.

Emma, creature of the water, doesn't seem to mind either, the edges of her nails carding through his hair, slipping in their grip as he moves.

And move he does, barely kissing her, lips and nose and breath tracing in more ways than one – they map, they sketch, they leave barely there touches to her skin. Over the collar of her neck, down the dale between her breasts. And when he plants open mouthed kisses to her stomach, the stutter of her breathing makes him grow harder low in his stomach and lower still… and it makes his heart impossibly softer.

Killian can feel the temperature of her skin change, no longer the cool balm it often is. Now it burns, flushed and warm beneath him and it's maddening to think of how he's wondered about this. Of the want, of the trap, of the songs. Of the skin he could always see but never look at, nor touch, now beneath his lips, now nervously trembling beneath him. Could never look at, could never touch, could never dip his tongue down between her legs.

It frustrates him to no end that the songs are in there - in his head - echoing their betrayal, their cruelty as though they are – as though Emma is - simply a magical object, beautiful and cunning.

The woman beneath him is just Emma.

The rain is nothing to the whimpers she makes, the sighs, the way she mutters his name back to him. They are quiet sounds, echoed by the rain, by the blood in his ears. Killian lingers a little, relishing in the sensation, the way she twitches beneath his tongue, the way that kissing the knot of her nerves - deeply, circling, softly, with his thumb - makes the thighs either side of him twitch and tremble, but not fall.

Emma is so warm, and he would stay there until she fell, were it not for the way the backs of her fingers and her nails find his cheeks, until they hook around his jaw and attempt to pull him back up to her level.

Killian does not return to her immediately, instead catching his breath against her navel. He is so nervous, the crave thrumming a blush into his cheeks. He feels every inch of himself straining with heat, with an undeniable tension and an impatience in his blood. He distracts himself with languid touches of his lips along her stomach.

The stories warned him about this.

It vaguely occurs to him that he's never done this before, and that maybe he's over-stepped, taken the lewd stories that followed others' experiences too seriously. But the kiss that she gives him, the one filled with tongue and want tells him he shouldn't have worried. Not as she arches into him, legs hitching up around him, breasts and breaths and chest arching against his own.

"Another time," she whispers against his lips, gasping for air amidst her words.

"Will there be?"

"Don't."

She punctuates her point (again) with a light kiss, leaving her lips to bump against his, as her fingertips step lightly across the skin of his neck, down, down. Through the thick hair on his chest, down, across his stomach lightly grazing, until her fingers wrap around where he is hard.

Emma is tentative touching him at first, before twisting her hand with a bit more pressure behind it. She giggles when Killian's own weight slips suddenly, his arms stumbling with the curl of her hand, shifting their balance until he's bracing himself more steadily on his forearms. He grips the feathers beneath him, locks of her hair twisting in his hands at the same time.

"Bloody he-" he loses the end of the curse he grumbles in her ear with a sharp intake of breath, with a well timed pull.

But leaning back she's still laughing, her lip caught between her teeth, smiling.

"Siren," he accuses her.

"This is what they tell me."

When she presses a smile into his cheek, he feels lighter than he has in many moons, the heavy overwhelming feeling no longer feels overcrowded and like a burden. It is still too much. However, rather than that sickening weight, it feels like bursting, his heart swooping low into his stomach at the sound or her chuckle; a welcome stutter in his chest.

He is so in love with her.

Although, he's still not sure how to say it; to say that _something_. Killian's fairly certain she feels something along the same lines, but she's still a little guarded in her words and all he really knows how to do is to kiss it down the length of her chin, to nudge her with it as his nose dips her head.

He nearly loses himself when he eases into her. Nearly shatters at the noise she makes, the way her head falls to the side, nails clenching in on themselves upon his hips. His own head falls to the side of hers, waiting for her to give him the okay as she breathes sharply, adjusting to the feel of him, shifting, rocking her hips.

The feeling as he begins to move, the slide and the grind is overwhelming. He thought Emma's grip was warm, that her hand was good – but this?

He braces himself as much as he can, forearms pillowed by her feathers as he rolls out and surges in, tresses of her hair tangling further about his fingers and tickling the under part of his elbows.

And the clouds thunder outside.

He knows why he should have been afraid of this. Knows why the swans speak danger, knows why his people echo the same thought.

Of the want, of the greed, of his desire. She is all-consuming to him, with her ankle encouraging his thrusts, her hands in his hair. Killian wonders if he'll ever atone for what he's done. He wants to prove himself – prove himself the person he thinks he is, prove himself someone not to be crossed, that he would rather be a rebel than at their mercy and he doesn't know how to be both – and she makes him question every step, and makes him want to prove himself to her instead.

He still wants her as much as he always has, even tangled up like this with her - he still wants more. It quenches nothing (well, almost nothing).

And this year, when she leaves with the dawn, it will be even harder than before to let her go.

Emma's thoughts must mirror his own, because there is a wrinkle in her brow, her eyes locking with his in recognition.

"Don't look at me like tha-at."

He thrusts a little differently, seeing the reaction he was hoping for in the stumble of her sentence.

"How am I looking at you?" The words are more puffs of air than they are fully formed syllables.

And Emma shoots him a sharp look for being smart with her before shutting her eyes lazily to his ministrations.

One of his hands drifts down her side, thumbing slowly over the peak of her nipple before going all the way around her; drawing circles with his thumb, hitching her to change the angle; a gasp from her and a groan from himself.

The feeling of her underneath him, around him, holding him as he pushes in and out puts him in a daze, his body blushing and burning. Every touch, every movement brings him tenser pleasure. It becomes harder and harder to not blurt out his feelings, to mumble them into her skin in the hopes that she gets it.

(He knows she gets it.)

She's struggling to hold on, struggling to let go, biting untidy kisses along his jaw and whispering to him with a raw throat.

"Like you're afraid."

But she's right, his fears are still present on his face.

The fables of his people are wrong and ignorant. And yet he hears their lyrics in his head, that wanting her like this will be his downfall.

He hears them, but they're not what he's afraid of.

(Not by a long shot.)

But Killian is also struggling to hold on, struggling not to let go before he's pushed her over first. They're both trying to get that little bit further, deeper, higher, the place he's hit a few times before the distracting way she'd kissed him made him lose it. And every whimper she makes does something to him – a shiver down his neck - making it harder for him to hold on.

He knows when he's got it again, when the thrust hits that mark again, and again, because Emma is physically restless beneath him, her mouth a muted gasp, her legs higher up his sides, tighter.

And then she's gone.

The flutter of hers that twists around him, and the cry from the back of her throat that reverberates from her lungs to his, is what undoes him. His arms shake, his momentum stutters, until he is torn apart at last and spent.

(Emotionally and physically.)

It reminds him of cannon fire.

The rain is still ringing in the distance somewhere, all sound a little numb as though the boom of the cannon and the drum of its fire has gone off too close to his ears. It takes the world a moment to settle, for his senses to realign in the night.

There are barely audible little puffs of air on his lips that bring him back.

Emma.

The rain.

The darkness and the floor of his childhood home.

A thumb upon the bone of his cheek, even though her eyes are closed.

Killian waits there, arms bracketed around her head, waiting for her to open her eyes to kiss her, just once, lazily, far too drained for anything more before the sweat on his brow has even cooled. They stare at one another long before he speaks, barely a thought readable in her eyes.

"And what if I _am_ afraid."

"Of what? My people?"

The lump in his throat, he swallows it, shaking his head and frustrated with himself because no matter how he says this it's going to come out overly sad and terribly sappy.

"Of tomorrow morning."

It is a sign that he stopped listening to the stories - a long time ago - when the one night of the year that doesn't fill him with dread, the only one that doesn't weigh heavily on him, is the one the stories tell him to fear most.

Never visit the lake on the third full moon of Spring.

He wonders what would have happened if he'd never gone, if he didn't live with his own yearly calendar so focused around hers. Would he have found something else to live for?

It is there in the dark of the house, with her on her stomach and he on his back, her lips mumbling into the skin of his shoulder, that she whispers the words against the rain. Three of them. Three small words.

The ones that seem to answer his wish (and hers).

(" _Come with me."_ )

.

 _Ten for a bird, you must not miss…_

There's a light-heartedness that carries him to the lake, as though he does not tread there down the same old overgrown footpath, but something else entirely new.

He wonders what the townsfolk would say if they could see him now, what they would sing if they knew what he was going to do. Would they try to save him, would they arm him to the hilt, lock him in a cell somewhere? Would they think him a lost cause? A man so foolish that he spent his whole life ignoring their warnings?

But their warnings are too ignorant for his ears, their tales know nothing of the things he's seen, the things he's felt curl around his heart and take root there.

They would probably tell him good riddance – he's done nothing but make enemies of them anyway.

He would also reckon that they are the foolish ones, the ones that he should warn. Although, honestly, his warning would not stray too far from their own. Beware the bathing swans, do not go to the lake, but if you do…

Killian doesn't bother to try and soak in the woodland path as he goes, doesn't consider that maybe he should look around – one last time – and see the birds sitting in their boughs, the daffodils that are beginning to bloom now curled up for the night. He doesn't give them more than a cursory glance, the same lack of interest he gives the twigs he crunches beneath his foot.

The promises that this place can give him are not what he really wants.

It cannot give him back his brother, cannot give him back his mother, the nights he lost because of his father.

This world cannot reclaim the faith he held in anything here.

Emma does not meet him by the red oak tree this time. She stands further down the bank, down where it was he'd first met her, where he'd tried to steal her cape. (He's never been so glad to have failed something in his life). Killian spies no other beings around, nothing but the shadows of trees in the night, but there is a sea of feathers at her feet of white and black, the capes of her kind dumped and spread without heed and without rigour.

Emma still wears her own cloak. She also wears a smile, it puts crinkles in her eyes and dimples in her chin and he's thankful that it's not too dark to see those.

"Fancy a midnight swim?"

There is no point whispering anymore, and Killian calls out a short distance away, his voice echoing out upon the water to where he's sure they can all hear him.

"What, no hello?"

"We call it skinny-dipping in our realm – take all our clothes off and jump in the water. On second thought, that's pretty ordinary for you."

Killian wastes no time in walking straight up to her, no hesitation in bringing his hand to the clasp of her cloak. The feathers they feel light and smooth beneath his thumb, and the brooch that's made of some sort of metal coated skin is as soft as his own leather. He taps in poignantly with his fingers meeting her still-dimpled smile with the arch of an eyebrow.

"I like you like this," Emma whispers despite their new freedom with volume.

"Like what?"

"This," she nods at him, merely pointing out his mood. "Whatever _this_ is."

There is a single wisp of wind that blows between them, it drifts from the lake to literally ruffle some of Emma's feathers. Her face looks ruffled too, a brief irritation and an eye-roll, that looks distinctly like she's been told off by someone.

Emma finds both his hands and his finger twine easily into hers without even thinking.

"Are you sure you want to do this? Last chance to back out."

There is so much vulnerability in the way she asks him, a headstrong attitude and a wary sensitivity that he might just say no.

But Killian has no intention of hesitating, he made the decision a year ago, and his heart made the decision for him long before that.

"Are you sure you want me to?"

And they are still answering questions with questions.

But Killian hopes she hears the sincerity in his voice, the gravity of his delivery echoing the gravity of their decision. Because he's not an idiot. He knows that this is big, that there is no coming back from this.

She accepts the volley of his question as the yes that it is.

Emma loses her cape first, unhooking it slowly and keeping her eyes hooked on his instead.

Memories of the last time, of her bare skin flushed and flush against his, of the forbidden feel of her actually at the touch of his hands, his lips. This is not about that. Her lack of clothes and feathers is rarely ever about that.

But the memories flash quietly in her eyes just as they do in his.

The feathers fall and gather at her ankles and all mirth is lost, subdued in an instant by the solemnity of what it is they are doing.

Fingers slip beneath his coat, running gentle touches over his shoulders and down his arms, Emma pushing the coat off him until it flops to the ground with a heavier sound than her feathers had.

And Killian waits.

He waits for the weather to whip and to howl like he's seen before – great crashes of light, the rain so heavy it almost pounds bruises into his skin - and he waits for the hesitation and fear to overtake him.

Neither come.

The air does nothing, it is as light as the feeling in his heart, as light as the touch of her fingers as she unbuttons his vest with ceremony.

The weather on this night is always an auspice.

Killian begins to aid her fingers, slipping off his boots, unbuckling his belt and sliding his tight black trousers to the ground to meet their other clothes. It's not like last time either - there is nothing sexual about the way they take off their clothes.

It is so quiet.

Each pull of his clothing seems to echo around them – the leather is not a quiet material, it creaks - the movement of their feet chinking slowly on the pebbled ground. He yearns to break it, to tease something, to make her smile once more, to have her laughter ring out around them.

However, it is the concentration on her face that stops him. Her eyes are not entirely in focus as at last his shirt is slipped over his head, some magical chant written in the fog of her eyes that he dare not break.

Emma does instead.

"You really want to do this?"

It isn't a warning, it isn't an ultimatum – simply a question. One that is telling of just how much she is scared of this, of them, of the fact that him coming with her means as much as it does. But it was her idea, and it may be fear but it isn't backing down.

"I would follow you anywhere."

Sighing deeply and voicing her okay, she takes his hand.

The water is cold.

Without a stitch to him to warm him up it sends a violent shiver or two up his spine, and the surface of the lake floor is uneven, pebbles and sand and an accoutrement of sharp things making him stumble.

They are about waist deep in the water when it all begins to change.

The weather begins to storm, a slowly swarming shadow of cloud, of magic whirling above them, sparkling silver as the women around them begin to sing - and he can't help but panic. It is a reflex. He's seen it happen too many times (those few times a few times too many), he knows what is to happen and the dread it once struck within him.

But it doesn't feel the same.

"Not to seem untrusting, Emma, but this looks an awful lot like what happened to the others."

Still, he would be lying if he said he wasn't confused, thrown by the way that objectively there is no difference.

Two figures in the water, feathers on the beach, storms in the sky, and siren swans singing on the waves.

Perhaps, he has been caught in their trap, maybe this is how the magic has deluded him, made him see what he wants to see, see love where there should be evil.

He feels the swell of the water move about him, that gentle ripple of treading water as Emma uses their clasped hands to drift closer towards him. Killian has no idea how she manages, he can barely stand in the depth of where they stand, but she moves with ease _(magic)_ , her free hand finding the palm of his cheek, whispering above the hum of the chorus around them.

Surely, if it was a lie, if Emma was just dragging him under like the others she wouldn't look as she does – nerves and concern, and hope.

"Do you trust me?"

She still looks worried, but there's the faintest flicker of a smile – this question is one she knows the answer to. The whole thing started with trust, it seems fitting that it should end with it.

(Or begin again, with it.)

"Aye. I do."

Her lips find his, a soft touch of open mouths, an uncoordinated bump in the wading of the water. The dark lake water is on her lips, and he can feel it slide against his, cool, and briefly. But the next chase of his lips, a steadier pulling thing - that's when she does it.

She does not count.

There is no 5, no 4, no 3, 2, 1.

The hand on his cheek moves down his neck, wet fingers leaving trembling traces to his shoulder and pressing him down beneath the surface.

The lakebed disappears beneath his toes. The once gravelly surface slips far out of reach and his entire body sinks underneath with the simplest of pressures.

There is no fight in his body the way he had seen before, no thrashing against her limbs and the water. Yet, his instinct screams in protest, aware that human bodies are not made to stay underwater. Killian should gasp for air and reach in a frenzy for the surface. His lungs wail for it. The palms of his hands begin to fret and itch for it.

But he did the thing that the stories always told him not to.

He went to the lake. He trusted the swans.

It should feel like drowning. But it doesn't.

Emma doesn't just push him under, she joins him, never floating far from him. Killian opens his eyes for a moment, for just one minute, and all he can see is the gold of her hair, floating like a yellow silhouette in the black dark lake. Her body is smooth and slippery as it bumps against his own, and he can hear the crackle of magic somewhere above him dulled through water-logged ears. He can hear the movements of the others swimming somewhere around him, the tingle of the water against his skin as it screams for air, as it reacts to something else.

He has no idea what to expect next - he could either drown, or something else entirely.

The facts were never simple, the myths were never clear.

Beware the bathing swans.

They will lure men into the depths, down beneath dark black waters.

Until, they reach the Otherside.

And the warnings were always there, and he heard every single one of them, he listened to every detail, every song, every fable.

Over the years, he heard but never really listened, never heeded much they tried to tell him.

But at twenty-six, with Emma's hand still held tightly in his own, sinking into a glowing darkness, Killian knows no better.

All he knows, is that if you do go to the lake, best make sure you know what kind of man you are.


End file.
